Blind Guides

I saw a post today online that quoted ‘a megachurch pastor’ saying this:

“The effort to impeach Trump is actually an effort to impeach Christian values.”

I don’t think I want to call myself a Christian anymore. That word has started to mean some really scary things.

Take the phrase “Christian Values”— which apparently means the sort of values that are imposed on people from without, by means of a severe and authoritarian regime.

Then there is this one: “Evangelical Christian”— which seems to designate a person who believes that they have a special status conferred on them by God directly, and that they have been given the assignment to intimidate, manipulate, and coerce people into believing they have also received this superior status and divine assignment; and then these ‘evangelicals’ demand that their converts verify their new status by carrying out the very same methods.

Jesus had quite a bit to say about people like that.

Let me see, here…….  (Most of this is from Matthew 23)


“They tie heavy loads onto people’s shoulders but won’t lift a finger to help carry them.  Everything they do is done to be seen by others..” 

“For you are shutting the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces, neither entering yourselves nor allowing those who wish to enter to do so.” 

“You go about over land and sea to make one proselyte; and when you succeed, you make him twice as fit for Gei-Hinnom as you are!” 

“Woe to you, you blind guides! You say, ‘If someone swears by the Temple, he is not bound by his oath; but if he swears by the gold in the Temple, he is bound.’  You blind fools! Which is more important? the gold? or the Temple which makes the gold holy? And you say, ‘If someone swears by the altar, he is not bound by his oath; but if he swears by the offering on the altar, he is bound.’  Blind men! Which is more important? the sacrifice? or the altar which makes the sacrifice holy? So someone who swears by the altar swears by it and everything on it.  And someone who swears by the Temple swears by it and the One who lives in it. And someone who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and the One who sits on it.” 

“You pay your tithes of mint, dill and cumin; but you have neglected the weightier matters of the Torah — justice, mercy, trust. These are the things you should have attended to — without neglecting the others! 24 Blind guides! — straining out a gnat, meanwhile swallowing a camel!” 

“You clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence. Blind Parush! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside may be clean too.” 
“You are like whitewashed tombs, which look fine on the outside but inside are full of dead people’s bones and all kinds of rottenness.  Likewise, you appear to people from the outside to be good and honest, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and far from Torah.” 

“You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the tzaddikim,  and you say, ‘Had we lived when our fathers did, we would never have taken part in killing the prophets.’ In this you testify against yourselves that you are worthy descendants of those who murdered the prophets.  Go ahead then, finish what your fathers started!” 

“You snakes! Sons of snakes! How can you escape being condemned to Gei-Hinnom?  Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and Torah-teachers — some of them you will kill, indeed, you will have them executed on stakes as criminals; some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town.  And so, on you will fall the guilt for all the innocent blood that has ever been shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Hevel to the blood of Z’kharyah Ben-Berekhyah, whom you murdered between the Temple and the altar. Yes! I tell you that all this will fall on this generation!”

I wish I could figure out some alternative term. “Christ” means ‘the Anointed One’, but we‘ve never used that word in the same context that the early Jewish Christians did. In Hebrew, the word is ‘Messiah’ but we don’t have a cultural framework for that word anymore. We just don’t have any common custom of anointing people and setting them apart as holy, or endowed with special significance, or as wielders of a divine mandate. That missing cultural background erodes the original meaning of the words ‘Messiah’ and ‘Christ’ and leaves them vulnerable to misinterpretation.

In some of my blogs, I’ve called Jesus “The Human” on account of his habit of referring to himself as ‘ben Adam’, or ‘Son of Man’. That phrase in the Torah often indicates humanity as a whole; it’s a term that could be translated as “Humankind”.

I suppose that Jesus could be called “The Mortal” as well. Oh, and there’s always “The Earthling” as a possible choice.

Unfortunately the words “Humanist” and “Mortalist” have already been taken, and they’ve been assigned very specific meanings that prevent them from doing duty as a synonym for ‘Christian’.

I suppose I could change the suffix, to arrive at “Humanian” or “Earthlingist” but I cringe at the endless prospect of all the repetitive explanations that those terms would require me to provide.

I was going to go with “Wayist” since the term “the Way” is one of the earliest historical designators of Christianity, but that word has been appropriated by the proponents of a New Age amalgam of ancient spiritual beliefs and practices, none of which have anything to do with The Human’s message.

I guess there’s nothing to be done about sharing the name “Christian”; but oh, how it rankles!

Nevertheless, I still have every intention of blowing the whistle on all the snakes and sons of snakes; the blind guides; the whitewashed tombs; the predatory hypocrites; the robbers and self-indulgent camel-swallowers; the prophet-killers and those self-proclaimed door-wardens of Heaven who remain spattered with innocent blood, even now.

Shame on them!