Reply #13: There are more biting ones [View All]

[PATRICK]

Matthew's Gospel after all is dealing with the Church's battle with the regrouping of Judaism around Pharasaism, build a "fence around the Torah" that- like today's Gaza wall- excluded Christians even more than the Minim formal excommunication. Matthew's audience were Mideastern Christians, many Jewish, for whom the issue was deep and big and personal.

Where you really see the sparks fly in the Gospels is when Jesus is not necessarily just talking to Pharisees, but to people sent out to get him and trip him up. That was their secret purpose. In debates where he owned these infiltrators you find the more emotional hard edge of the issue. The "unforgivable sin" is saying good is evil and evil good. When faced with the truth and the claim that his adversaries "see" or reason just as well as anyone he puts down their lies then says "because you say you see, your sin remains." He also opposed popular notions right to the angry crowd's faces mincing no words and directly challenging. Real actions are your judge, not any words, not even by would be or actual followers. You secret motives and intents and desires are where the real actions proceed from. The challenge "the one without sin must cast the first stone" cuts directly to that and points out the shiftiness of even the boldest pretension. That meting out godlike absolute punishment has no merit when based on fundamental, logic edited, rage enhanced hypocrisy.

In actual confrontation with trolls and idiotic self-righteous judgment he met it with the true absolutes of reality, God and reason. For this he got chased out of towns, stoned, escaping mob execution, and plotted more furiously against and he took the confrontation straight to the center while he still had a chance to get there before being outlawed or killed.

Hypocrites normally don't or can't want forgiveness. Even under drugs and torture this poisoned will and abuse of mind and soul is pretty fixed, but Saul of Tarsus was pretty close to being that far gone, participating in the death of a heretic like Stephen, but just holding the coats. He knew he was no law keeper himself and his search for an absolute was only damning him down the path of a law he himself could not keep ion any way to justify the energetic persecution of others. He was on his way to arrest more "threats" to Judaism when he was forced to see what he was doing and received a totally opposite absolute. Now reformed characters tend to have the parameters of their former selves so some unsavory traits continue(judgmentalism, harshness to others, rationalizations, flights of zeal).

Nothing is impossible but it is easier for a rich man to enter the kingdom than a bloody handed hypocrite. One has to give up possessing things, the other has to give up or reverse an inner mindset. Both are rare enough to be considered exceptional or "heroic".