Some of my favorite confrontations in the Bible are Jesus v. Pharisees. The religious elite of the day were a haughty bunch. Full of their own purpose and destiny and righteousness and judgemental of everyone who was not one of the bunch. Yesterday when I was reading Matthew 15 & Mark 7 I once again got to watch the Pharisees get slapped down for not doing the one thing they prided themselves on: following the one true God.
The Pharisees open with trying to trap Jesus, "Why don't you follow Jewish tradition? You don't properly wash your hands before your meal." Jesus' reply? "Why don't you follow God?" The Pharisees take great pride in following God the the smallest thing. They measure out their spices with a tweezer so they can give exactly 10% back to God. However they have decided that if you have elderly parents that need support and you instead give the money to the synogauge you don't need to help your elderly parents. It is only necessary to "Honor your father and mother" if you don't give the money to the temple. Jesus basically replies "Your right I'm not following all traditions, but I'm following the laws and rules of God while you're busy following the laws and rules of men." He clearly has offended the Pharisees, which most people wouldn't dream of doing. His disciples call him in it and he replies, " "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit." It seems clear to me that he has had enough of this foolishness. "Leave them" he says.
I often feel that the high profile leaders of the Christian church are the same way. They have neglected God for tradition. Today I read about the Conservative Bible project. Which is one of the most frightening and maddening things I've heard from the "Christian politicians" for a while. They would like to take words like "volunteer" out because it is liberally biased. Apparently because scholars have translated the Bible and scholars tend to be "liberal & femenist" they have put a liberal spin on the bible. Apparently Jesus would not be in favor of social justice and would not have used the word "comrade" but instead "volunteer." Also the original languages were not adequate to fully capture what Jesus meant, lucky for us we now have English (conservative English is actually the term they use...). As we all know English is known for its depth and ability to express difficult concepts. All of these views can be found on the link, confusingly under the "References" section, which as far as I can tell is not filled with anything similar to a reference.
More scary than any of that is the basic premise behind this. This is basically saying "This part of the bible doesn't agree with my political or social views, therefore, it must be wrong and needs to be changed." That is not the premise of Christianity!! If the Bible says something that you don't agree with or doesn't jive with your current lifestyle the problem is NOT IN THE BIBLE. The problem is with you.
They are personally sullying the name of Jesus. I would absolutely meet with them to tell them how much I disagree, however they would not be welcome in my home.
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