New Thoughts (11/20/05-11/22/05)
How easily we slip into the same mistake that the Pharisees made. We look at this expansive expression of God’s Law and come away with no more than a list of words we ought not to use. Well, raca is easy enough to avoid, since it’s not in our vocabulary anyway. That call not to say ‘you fool’, though, gets a bit harder to manage. So, we concentrate all our effort on striking that phrase from our conversations, and all the while we’ve completely missed the point. In part, the point has been lost in translation (or lack thereof). Because we no longer understand ‘fool’ in the way it was once used, we don’t grasp the real significance of what Jesus is decrying here.
What He is saying is that anything that we might do that calls into question the inherent worth of human life is condemned on the same grounds as murder is condemned. Both of them are criminal in that they refuse the honor that is due to man for the simple reason that he bears the image of God who created him. It’s not a question of whether they believe in God or not. Their belief or disbelief won’t change the facts. They were created in His image, though they may scorn Him all their days, and because they bear His image, they will always have some worth.
Look at the meaning of those words Jesus is speaking about. Both are accusations of worthlessness. Raca places its judgment of worth on the mental capacities. It charges thoughtlessness, an incapacity for real thought, and because of that lack of reason, declares that one to be devoid of all worth. ‘Fool’, in the sense it is used here, is an even more serious accusation, claiming that on top of this thoughtlessness, there is an absence of moral sense. It might be more complete to translate it as ‘godless fool’. In our modern usage, we tend to lose sight of the fact that wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord, so we miss the implications that one who is foolish is so precisely because he lacks that fear which produces wisdom.
As with so much of this Christian life, the issue is not with a specific word or phrase, it is with the judgment we have passed in our thinking that causes us to utter such phrases. The thing God is telling us we must reject is the mindset that undervalues man, that cheapens life, whether it be overall or in a particular case. In our own age, there are so many actions taken against human dignity, so much that occurs because the value of man has been all but lost in man’s own perspective. Life has become less a matter to be cherished even at its meanest, but rather a matter for negotiation and convenience. If we are comfortable with the idea, perhaps we’ll allow a new life to come into being. If they don’t cost us too much to care for, perhaps we’ll allow the elderly to live out their days in peace. Life has become, instead of the rich blessing of bearing God’s image, just another matter of economic concern.
Now, God has declared that humanity as great intrinsic worth. Even the worst of men has this going for him: he bears the image of his Creator. Therefore, by God’s own estimation he has worth. Therefore, if we say otherwise about that man, we have declared that God is a liar. How can we declare unclean what He has said is clean? How can we deem worthless what He tells us is worth saving? How can we look upon people who in the end are no worse, really, than we were ourselves, and decide that they’re just not salvageable? You see, not only have we failed in misjudging the worth of another person, we have also in declaring that opinion, become guilty of bearing false witness against them. Thus, we have increased our own guilt before the heavenly court, for we now stand guilty of breaking with two of God’s commandments in this one comment.
How quickly, though, we have retreated to the positioning of the Pharisees in this regard! We reject them for having foolishly reduced the commandment against murder to such attainable goals, for refusing to consider the wider implications. Jesus, with this teaching, forces that consideration on His hearers, forces them to see how the Law really and truly applies. Yet, for many of us, even His expansion of the Law has been contracted back down to near meaninglessness. We concern ourselves with avoiding those words He has condemned, but leave the thoughts behind them unchecked. And, we think we are doing fine. Not only have we not killed anybody, we have been ever so careful to keep those thoughts to ourselves. As our parents taught us, when we have had nothing good to say about another, we have said nothing. And, so doing, we think we have obeyed. We have not. Let’s be exceedingly clear on that point. Obedience is so far beyond the piddling detail of words spoken, as to reduce verbal compliance to a mere game of charades. The whole message of Jesus in this section is that righteousness is about far more than works and words. It’s about the character of the hidden, inner man. It’s about our thought-life. It’s about who we really are, even when nobody’s watching us. It’s about who we are in spirit and in truth, for this is the part of us whose worship habits really matter.
Lord, Jesus, I look at this and I know I have fallen into this same false comfort. I know that I have thought that somehow the fact that my words weren’t uttered aloud made everything OK. But, I know better. It is the thought of the flesh that seeks to quiet my conscience. Thank You, Lord, for refusing to allow conscience to remain silent. Thank You for this reminder that the Law is so much greater than we make it. Father, forgive the judgments I have passed against those around me, the judgments I have passed on those who are really just like me, beggared sinners in need of Your grace and thoroughly dependent on Your willingness to supply our incredible need.
God, I pray that somehow, this recognition of worth in others would become part and parcel of who I am. I pray that I would increase in compassion for those around me who have not tasted of Your goodness and known You for who You are. I pray that somehow I might come to that place of burning desire to fulfill Your commandments, not only in the inward man, but also in outward actions that bear fruit for Your kingdom.
Something else is concerning me this morning, Holy One. I recall years back that I asked You to draw me back if these studies became something other than a conversation between the two of us. It seems clear to me that in large part, they have done so, however. It seems that too much of what I have been pursuing of late has been less about our relationship, and more about just about anything else. Father, I miss those more intimate conversations. I miss the sense of Your presence with me as I study. Oh, there are still those moments, but it seems more the exception than the norm right now, and that’s not as it should be. Perhaps it is just that I have been moving more into a teaching role, and this has changed how I have been studying. Whatever the cause, Lord, I pray that You would restore the intimacy, and help me to do what is necessary to make it moreso. If this new texture to things is part of what should be, then I pray that You would comfort me with the knowledge that my course is not so far off as I feel it to be.
Lord, it seems there is a new balance to be struck. It seems like I’ve swung too far from what was towards the more pedantic, less personal approach to these things. In some ways, it is growth, is it not? There are new depths that You have brought me to. Yet, as I have looked at those things, it seems I have discovered a tendency in myself to avoid myself. I have been afraid, of late, to let the things I am learning of You touch me as they used to. Oh! Help me not to fear the touch of Your truth! Keep me, oh Lord, hungry for Your Word, and willing for Your correction. Let there be no fear in this heart of mine, Holy Spirit, as it is exposed to the Light of Life Eternal.
As I looked at this passage, I found myself wondering how to connect the first two verses with the second pair. That there is a connection is made clear, for Jesus declares them to be connected when He says, ‘therefore.’ It is because such opinions about your brother are equivalent to murder insofar as the courts are concerned that you should take care to be reconciled. Now, how these thoughts are connected seems to me to be all the more obscured by the fact that the reconciliation Jesus urges us to is not about those places where we feel we have been wronged. Instead, it’s all about those situations where we know or suspect that we may have wronged another.
Listen carefully to what He says: “If your brother has something against you…” There is nothing here about if your brother has offended you. It is about self-assessment, not judgment. If you so much as suspect that your brother may have some reason to be offended with you, whether or not that reason is valid, go take care of it. While I would expect Jesus to keep us focused on our own issues, rather than casting about for reasons to be in our brother’s business, it remains difficult to catch the connection to His previous lesson.
Since you would be guilty of sin were you to consider your brother worthless, make sure you go take care of things between you if you think he has cause to think that way about you. That’s the sense of what He’s saying here, were I to boil it down. Perhaps, with that recasting of His lesson, the connection can be seen. If I’m viewing this right, He is now bringing in the second over-arching demand of the Law – to love your neighbor as yourself. See, if I recognize the danger I put myself in, I will surely, if sanity remains, seek to do something about it. What Jesus is saying here is that we should have that same degree of concern if we find that we have become the cause for a brother’s endangering himself.
Here is where I find a lot of modern psycho-religious teaching going south. I hear all sorts of suggestions that if we hold an offense against another then we have imprisoned them spiritually. This, I think, is supposed to be based on the idea that what we bind on earth is bound in heaven, or some such. It is utter nonsense, however, and becomes little more than an excuse for us to ignore the clear directions of this passage. Now, it becomes our duty to make sure that the one whom we have imprisoned by our own sinful holding of a grudge is made aware of that grudge, because we can say that our grudge (of which our brother was most likely completely unaware) was a ‘legal’ cause for him to be angry at ourselves. Since our grudge might have caused him harm in spite of his ignorance, we jump to saying that our grudge was something he has against us. We must go to him, explain what’s been going on, so that he can forgive us and we can move on. I tell you, this is such a twisting of what Jesus is talking about that it turns our efforts at reconciliation into something that borders on sinful, if it has not crossed the border completely.
We have exchanged the clear meaning of Jesus’ teaching for something that will make us feel good. What He is telling us is little different from the common advice given to husband and wife. It is the commandment to be the first to move towards reconciliation, whether you think yourself in the right or in the wrong. Being in the right is an insufficient cause not to apologize. It’s not, in this case, a matter of who is right and who is wrong. Face it. Both sides are sinners before God. It’s about not allowing sin to increase by refusing to love one another, refusing to manifest God’s character.
If I go up to a brother and say, “I have to ask your forgiveness for this attitude I’ve had towards you that you’ve been completely unaware of,” all I’ve done is cast a shadow on my brother. I have done nothing towards reconciliation. I have done nothing to change my own attitude, and it is my own attitude that is really the problem. I can walk away feeling better, if that brother declares his forgiveness, but I’ve done little more than shift my own burden of guilt onto his shoulders in underhanded fashion. I may have succeeded in making that man more aware of his own sinfulness, or I may have just left him scratching his head, wondering what just happened. I may have soothed my own feelings somewhat by ‘doing the right thing.’ But, I have done nothing that has any relationship to what Jesus teaches here.
Here, He is teaching us to be the peacemakers, to forget about whether we are in the right or in the wrong in a particular dispute, and to seek to put that dispute at an end without regard for self. He is reminding us of the great worth of every man, and how that ought to color our opinions about every man. He is then teaching us how to apply this in conjunction with the command of brotherly love. What He tells us about that brother love is that if we have reason to believe that anything we have done might have given rise to such anger and thoughts in our brother as He has previously been describing, we are bound by the duty of love to go make our apologies, to seek out the means by which we can restore that relationship.
It is a matter of whether he has something against me, not if I have felt I have something against him. My resentment towards him, being as we good Christian sorts are so terribly clever at keeping such things hidden out of sight, is unlikely to have been anything he was aware of, and therefore could not be anything he could have against me. If, however, I’ve allowed that resentment to walk me into fields of gossip, or malicious accusations against that brother, the situation has changed. While I should have dealt with my resentment alone with God a long time ago, now it has become a matter that must be dealt with by sterner means. Now, I must surely humble myself before that brother, confess my sin against him, and seek his forgiveness. More than that, I must put my best effort into reversing any damage my stupid words have caused. I have robbed my brother of his good name, and must, by the Law of God, restore what I stole from him seven-fold. But, so long as that wrong-headed opinion I have held remains held in my thoughts alone, it is something in which I have sinned against God and God alone. Therefore, from Him alone need I seek forgiveness. Should He reveal that these things have not been so well hidden as I thought, if He should reveal that my anger has indeed led to some sort of outward action injurious to my brother, then I am back to the need for restoration, but my first effort must be to correct myself and my standing with Dad.
Yes, Lord, and there is one brother who You have been bringing to mind as I studied this, whom I have certainly given sufficient cause to think me a jerk. Give me courage, Lord, to humble myself by asking his forgiveness of my attitude. Let there be, Lord, a proper restoration between us that no offense may remain in either him or myself. God, give me the humility to acknowledge this sin for what it has been, to crush the pride that keeps me from dealing with it as I ought, and to put it behind us both once for all. Above and beyond that, Holy One, work on that strain in my character that allows pride to rise up so quickly and vehemently. Teach me my place before You, Lord, that I might walk in the humility You require.
