The Pharisaic Process: An Unholy Headlock
Most Christians even remotely familiar with the gospels would recognize the Pharisees as the sect prominently noted for being recipients of Jesus’ scathing denunciations. In Matthew 23 He labels them as “blind guides”, “white-washed tombs” who don’t “practice what they preach”, “who love the place of honor”, “hypocrites”, “sons of hell” who “shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces”. You’d think they must have been chainsaw murderers.
How did the Pharisees get to this place? Here they were, about three centuries young, formed from a righteous desire to call all of Israel to covenantal obedience, and now Jesus calls them enemies of the God they think they’re serving. What happened?
In a nutshell, the Pharisees went the path of many institutions that experience prominence and power. The institution is started for godly purposes. Soon it begins to meet its objectives and experiences the natural accolades. Eventually an entrenched institutional clique is in full swing and its significance preserved by the creation of tests that only the insiders can pass. Those that fail are labeled for a lifetime. Finally, plans are created to remove threats to their now established place of prestige.
So what’s this have to do with us, sometimes foot-shuffling followers of Jesus? Well, the pharisaical process can consume more than just powerful religious sects, denominational hierarchies and divinity students. It can even cripple individual souls.
For the individual, the process is prompted through the arena of self-described strength. Are you great in athletics? Wonderful—athletics can serve the wisdom of Sabbaths marvelously. But in the process can also create athletic Pharisees. And unless you’re one of them, don’t even think about getting a pass throw your way. Do you consider yourself a superior parent? God knows we need you, but in the process toward wise parenting you can get sucked into the cesspool of “looking down on others” (Luke 19:9-14) for not having read as many James Dobson books.
More specifically, for the artistic practitioner and aesthetic theorist the problem can occur as an artistic or aesthetic pharisaism. Each passing year the artist accumulates knowledge and artistic refinement in a particular artistic expression, learns the language and builds his or her own aesthetic “Talmud”—which then can be recited chapter and verse. The journey can then take them a self-satisfying distance from the uninitiated and ordinary person. And very subtly the pharisaic process does its ugly work.
Thankfully, the process can be avoided when we remember that our artistic journey is never an end in and of itself. Growth in knowledge and experience is always to be seen in light of God’s call of loving service to all people. Furthermore, our journey should never be a source of condescension, but must always serve as a reconciling instrument in His Kingdom and at His disposal.
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