Then the Pharisees and scribes asked Him, “Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?”-Mark 7: 5

And He said, “What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.”- Mark 7: 20-23

A conversation between friends that made me think differently about the Pharisees and myself.

Every time I read about Jesus’ interactions with the Pharisees, I am faced with two options. I could look at the Pharisees as a people completely different from me. Consequently, I judge them because I want to make it clear that they are distinct from me. In my mind, I could consider myself being better than them because I can see Jesus’ point of view clearly. Then I am reminded of another gospel passage where Jesus reveals in a parable the inner thoughts of a Pharisees regarding a tax collector. It is exactly my attitude that I just mentioned. By judging a Pharisee, I inevitably become more like them.

The other option is for me to be more sympathetic towards them. I can make an attempt to understand them. After all, they were genuinely religious people who wanted to live their lives in a way worthy of their spiritual vocation. I can appreciate this. I want to do the same. Their main aim was to prepare themselves for the coming of the Messiah. Somehow they lost their way and became his enemies. Unfortunately, this is a more terrifying option. Everything indicates that in my fervent religiosity I can unknowingly become the enemy of the very person I am trying to serve.

Either option comes back to me in the negative. Whenever Jesus confronted the Pharisees for their limited way of interpreting God’s actions in this world, His words are also a challenge to me. I am a potential Pharisee or maybe I am already full-fledged Pharisee and I just don’t know it. I hope that there is a way out of this dilemma. Perhaps I need to ask the right questions and the conversation we had with our friends helped.

They are a couple. They both work in two different high-end shopping malls. They have the same clientele. It is not uncommon for them to meet people who spend exorbitant amounts every month of money on clothes. In some countries, this may not be a problem. However, in this city, everyday it is not uncommon to see families living and sleeping in the streets. Then my friends encounter people who spent what others earn in a year on one single trip to their store. The contrast is too great for anyone to ignore. Two different people had two contrasting opinions about their clients. One was more honest and perhaps even brutal. The other tended to be more appeasing and gracious, perhaps a little bit out of touch with reality. One is right and the one is wrong. This is what we like to imagine. In reality, it is not a question of who is right or wrong. Each of them have created a way of thinking that helps them deal with their reality. They chose to see only certain aspects of reality, perhaps one has a better grasp of truth than the other. Nevertheless, this is not the point. As human beings, we create a rational order in our head to survive in this world. We have to carefully choose our “truths” to help us function in this world. Naturally it also means that some things have to be discarded or ignored. We construct a world that helps us understand why things are the way they are so that we go on with life…until Someone comes disrupts everything. They don’t just disrupt our comfortable world, they also make it inconvenient for us to go on thinking like we used to do.

Our children and teens have devised a way of reasoning out their reality. They use all the tools available to them to create this world. Their religious background, their positive and negative experiences with people, the words they have heard said about them, things they observed in life in general; all these are prime materials to construct their world. However, the world we create in our minds is not invincible or impenetrable. It is imperfect and therefore vulnerable. It cannot resist change especially when it is confronted with Love. True perfect Love disrupts our world. This is why lovers are frequently disoriented. The fabric of their created reality falls apart when confronted with Love. It is possible to reject Love in order to persist in our limited concept of reality. It seems like a high price to pay. Unfortunately people do it all the time and I could be one of them, just like the Pharisees.

These Pharisees are a pain, not because they rejected Jesus, but because of who they were. It would have been easier if they were rogues with total disregard for anything religious. Unfortunately, they were self-consciously obedient to the Law. They wanted to be the ones who usher in the glorious reign of the Messiah. They followed everything religiously so to speak and thought that this alone was sufficient. Therefore, I cannot fall into this trap of complacency. As I tried to figure out a way to avoid this pitfall, the concept of virtues kept coming up. Coincidentally, several days later, I stumbled upon a lecture given by an agnostic history professor in Brazil and his topic was on the cardinal virtues. He advocated the return to virtuous living to live a complete life. Maybe it was the Holy Spirit leading me. It is strange that I hardly hear cardinal virtues spoken in churches. It seems like something we should hear among those who want to be like their Lord. Jesus was the embodiment of all what philosophers described as the complete life. He manifested all the virtues. St Paul dedicated a significant portion to Jesus’ humility in his letter to the Philippians and he was a Pharisee before.

In our ministry, humility means recognizing that the world that I have constructed in my head is the not the perfect world for everyone. That entails that I have to listen and learn how our children and teen have constructed their lives. My role is not to judge their fabrications because humility reminds me that I also have fabricated a world. We all live in worlds that are a mixture of fantasy and reality. Therefore, we cannot judge people by the standards of our imaginary concept. This leaves us with only one thing. Regardless of how people decide to see the world, Love is something that transcends all artificial realities. In the words of a former Pharisee,

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.- I Corinthians 13:2

Virtues make me realize that I need Love. This is what I understand for now. However, there is a long journey ahead of me.