Mankind's propensity toward intellectual and spiritual error

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Mankind’s propensity toward intellectual and spiritual error

The New Testament contains many accounts of Jesus healing people on the Sabbath day and thus bringing on the ire of the Jewish religious leaders. Repeatedly the Jewish religious leaders condemned Jesus for healing on the Sabbath day. They viewed it as a big violation of their law. The following passage records one example:

Matt 12:9 And when he was departed thence, he went into their synagogue: 10 And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? that they might accuse him. 11 And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? 12 How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days. 13 Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other. 14 Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how they might destroy him. 15 But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself from thence: and great multitudes followed him, and he healed them all;

God had given the following commandment to the Jews:

Exodus 20: {8} Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. {9} Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: {10} But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: {11} For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.

I think this is an excellent illustration of what the mind of man is capable of. The Jews, starting with God’s commandment above, had managed to, through all kinds of abstruse, complicated theological argument and reasoning processes, produce a body of law, doctrine, and custom in which it was OK to rescue a sheep who had fallen into a pit on the Sabbath day but to heal a person on the Sabbath day was a great sin. Jesus taught the importance of things like peacefulness, humility, truthfulness, kindness towards others, forgiveness of others, helping the poor and needy, moral purity, love of neighbor, sympathy, compassion, pity, humanity, mercy, goodness. The Jews, on the other hand had, over the centuries, developed a religion that consisted of a multitude of rules, regulations, rites and practices that impacted every aspect of Jewish life. These rules and practices included everything from rules on what Jews could and couldn’t do on their Sabbath to ceremonies of washing their hands before eating to procedures for cleaning pots and pans to the circumcision of males. To them right action, righteousness, godliness consisted in following all these rules. To them, rules, rites and practices were what religion was all about. Jesus told them that they had missed the essence of what God wanted. God wanted kindness, compassion and goodness.

I think that most major religions of the world teach that true religion consists in those things that Jesus taught. The one exception that I think of is Islam. Their religious book, the Koran, is a very hard, harsh, cruel book and the very cruel conduct of which so many Moslems have shown themselves capable reflects the hardness and cruelty of that book. The West has not been at all honest in its representation of Islam. It has represented it as a good religion. It is not. (I suspect the reason for this dishonesty has to do with oil, politics, and expedience.) It is true that there are many moderate Moslems. However, the central core of Islamic clerics is very conservative, rigid, and doctrinaire. They are very Koran oriented. And it is they who are responsible for all of these inhuman Islamic acts of mayhem. I believe that the West in welcoming large numbers of Moslems into their countries is making a gigantic mistake. People just don’t appreciate the gigantic cultural chasm that can exist between two peoples. Like ancient Judaism, Islam is also very rules, rites, and ceremony oriented causing adherents to tend to equate religiousness with obedience to a lot of rules and forms.

Islam could be likened to a great disease that afflicts many regions of the world. It is intellectual and spiritual error and is pernicious and bad. It is like a mental disease. Similarly, modern liberalism could also be likened to a great disease that afflicts a large portion of the world. And Buddhism and various other religions could also be likened to diseases affecting different parts of the world. How does one deal with these diseases? Can you fight them with guns and force? No. That won’t work. You can only defeat these diseases with Truth. That Truth is Christianity. They will never be eradicated, of course. They are all just a part of the ugly, Satan-dominated world that we live in. This world is a mess and will always be so.

Mar 2017