Thursday on the Michael Medved radio show is Disagreement Day. On Thursdays, he sets an hour aside specifically for people to tell him he’s wrong about homosexuality, tax policy, and George Bush’s culpability in blowing up the World Trade Center.
Today, he had a call from a young man who wanted to disagree with him on the legalization of drugs. This caller said he smoked pot every day, and it wasn’t doing him any harm. He mentioned, as an aside, that he was a “born-again Christian.” Medved, who is Jewish but who knows quite a lot about our beliefs, questioned him more closely on that point. It turned out that he did not go to church at all, and had recently moved into his first house “with my girlfriend.”
I suppose there’s an element of Pharisaism in my response to that call. Certainly I fail to live up to the standards of Christianity in many areas of my life, not least in my cowardly flight from almost all personal interaction with other humans. But I think I can claim (at a minimum) that I know I’m doing wrong, and that I acknowledge that I ought to do better. I’ve been given grace to feel some guilt. I’m afraid that Michael Medved’s young caller is representative of many people who claim Christian faith in our country today. He didn’t seem to be aware that a Christian is called to live in any way that’s at all different from his neighbors.
I don’t know for a fact that this is true of the caller, but I think a lot of people claim Christianity purely as a nostrum for their own spiritual aches and pains. “Try Jesus! Now in Extra Strength! He’ll have you feeling better in no time!”
In point of fact, genuine Christianity often makes a person much less comfortable in life. We have been promised persecutions and tribulations, and to be reviled for Jesus’ sake. The joys and consolations of Christian faith have absolutely no necessary connection with comfort.
Lutherans like me have a complicated relationship with the book of James, where it says, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (James 2:17) We don’t interpret that to mean that faith and works are equal partners in the operation of grace. We reject absolutely the idea that any effort of our own can contribute to our salvation.
But, as we read it, works are the sign and byproduct of grace. You can tell a genuine faith from a false faith by looking at its fruits. If someone is living no differently than he did before his “conversion,” it’s probably not a genuine one. Someone has paraphrased Luther as saying, “We are not saved by faith and works, but by faith that works.”
The caller should have been questioned on his basis for claiming to be born again. I suppose he made a profession sometime back.
Pharisees got a lot of bad press in Christianity. But they were people in the post-prophetic age, trying to avoid precisely this kind of generalized feel-good religion.
You should not feel bad that your reaction is somewhat Phariseetical. That’s the response called for in this particular case.
I’m sure you understand that I meant no offense, Ori. Pharisaism (that’s the correct term in Christian theology) has a definite meaning in Christian thought, springing from the precise issues on which Jesus disagreed with that party’s teachers. I’ve blogged elsewhere that, as I understand it, Jesus leaned toward the Pharisees in the bulk of the disputes of the era.
And St. Paul still spoke of himself as a Pharisee in the present tense, even after he was a Christian.
If Paul called himself a Pharisee, what did Peter and Mary get called? When with Paul… a trio….
(HA! I’ve waited years to write that some where!!)
Lars, no offense taken, of course. I remember reading you about how Jesus was closer to the Pharisees than to the other Jewish sects. But I still don’t see your reaction as suffering from excessive Pharisaism. As you said, at least you acknowledge that you’re a sinner, and try to do your best not to be. That’s what the Pharisees demanded.
Michael, didn’t Paul also say he ate with Greeks? I don’t think one could eat with Greeks and be Pharisee.
Ori, I’m sure that at some point other Pharisees certainly questioned the validity of his Pharisaism, but as of Acts 23:6 he definitely considered himself a “card-carrying member” (or is that codex-carrying?) especially in regards to the resurrection of the dead.
Yes, John, with a joke like that one has to seize the moment when it comes, as was said of Dr. Opperknockity, the famous piano tuner, “Opperknockity tunes but once.”
Hey guys, that’s cool how my verse reference in the comment above came up as an actual link to the verse. Howja do that?!
It’s a feature of our comment system. Surprised me too, the first time. Phil set it up, I think.
Michael, we once had here a long argument about whether Mormons are real Christians. Mormons say they are, other Christians often say they aren’t.
I believe that Paul’s position about being Pharisee is the same thing. He considered himself a Pharisee, and used that plea in court. That doesn’t mean he acted as one most of the time.
We are saved by faith, not works, but the faith that saves has good works as its necessary fruit.
I certainly see your point, Ori. My original point wasn’t to assert a position on whether Paul was correct in considering himself a Pharisee, but to bolster Lars’ point that Jesus and Jesus’ followers had some beliefs in common with the Pharisees after all.
That (that Jesus had some beliefs in common with the Pharisees) is definitely true. Sorry I misunderstood you.
Hey, not a problem!
Probably the really “complicated” verse for Lutherans & others in James is James 2:24, “You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.” I suppose Lars & Dale have already explained how we understand that. I was taught in seminary that, though Luther referred to James as an “epistle of straw,” his opinion of James improved over time. At any rate, just because our denomination bears Luther’s name doesn’t mean that we’re bound to his opinions on everything. James 1:19 is one of my very favorite verses, and I have other favorites in it. Kierkegaard loved James, especially James 1:17, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above …”
The verse references will link to verses in the ESV because of a little javascript behind the scenes. I didn’t set it. Our blog developer, Bill Roberts, did it.
Phil, can you have your blog developer check into why the right column stuff always renders to the bottom of the page below the left column content with Seamonkey/Mozilla browsers?
Seamonkey?
What’s your screen resolution, Greybeard? I believe the reason is that left content has a minimum width, and if IE doesn’t do the same, perhaps it ignores that minimum width citation.
Like Phil said, Seamonkey?!?
When I was small I saw Seamonkey ads with the fanciful pictures that made them look like little aquapeople, and I was genuinely troubled by the ethical implications of keeping them captive in small tanks. That didn’t stop me from feeding thousands of brine shrimp to baby guppies later in life.
Anyway, now that I know that 21st century Seamonkeys have their own browser, the ethical dilemma has been elevated …
Seamonkey is a suite that combines a browser and email client in one app. It started as Netscape and then they changed the name to Mozilla when the open source community took over. After Mozilla separated into the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email, a new team took over the development of the suite, using the firefox and thunderbird code as a foundation.
I use 800×600 on an old 17″ CRT monitor that was new when I bought it in 2003.