“I was so nice about Hitler – a much misunderstood man.”
The
History Boys (2006)
 |
| The image works on two counts: first, its vaguely medical theme could feasibly imply rehab, and second, I discuss a passage in which Jesus makes a cutting diagnosis of humanity’s ultimate heart condition. |
Just to be absolutely clear,
the point of the preceding two posts in this little mini-series of mine – and,
equally, of this one – has not been that the Pharisees were actually pretty
nice guys and we should cut them some slack.1
It perhaps wouldn’t be
surprising if it were. I have, after all, just spent three years studying a
humanities subject at undergraduate level, a process which, at least based on
my experience of it, can sometimes feel like little more than a desperate
struggle to argue something – anything – that nobody else has argued
yet; and since, as a Classicist, I have, by and large, been studying works
about which people have been making arguments for some two thousand years, the
gratuitous challenging of some traditionally-held view or other has often seemed
almost compulsory in order to stand any chance of gaining credit for
originality. Early on in The History Boys, Irwin exhorts the class of
boys whom he has been hired to help make successful Oxbridge applications to
exactly such an effect: “So, our overall conclusion is that the origins of the
second war lie in the unsatisfactory outcome of the first. Yes. First class.
Bristol welcomes you with open arms! Manchester longs to have you! You can walk
into Leeds! But I’m a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford; I’ve just read
seventy papers; they’re all saying the same thing; and I’m asleep.” When it
comes to the pertinent exam, therefore, one of the students, Posner, opts for
being nice about Hitler as a way to set his answer apart from the crowd.2
But such an approach only
really works if one is prepared to sacrifice truth – at least in some measure –
for the sake of novelty. Indeed, Irwin freely admits as much: “What’s truth got
to do with it? What’s truth got to do with anything?” Likewise, to claim that
the Pharisees were all right after all would be to ignore – at least in some
measure – the kinds of things Jesus said about them. A fuller understanding of
the context in which they were said doesn’t change the substance of their
content. To believe the words of Jesus is to acknowledge that the Pharisees of
and to whom he spoke really were comparable to blind guides, vipers, children
of hell.3
Which being so, my point in
making the case, over the previous couple of weeks, that the Pharisees were actually
getting a lot right, has not been simply to recast them as good guys (or even
not-brilliant-but-sort-of-all-right guys). Rather, it has been to highlight how
much higher God’s standards are than I think we realise. To believe sound
doctrine, to seek to better understand God’s character through scripture, to
reject a nominal obedience of his commands in favour of trying to reflect him
in even the smallest details – it sounds like a description of a perfectly
God-glorifying life. Yet, though the Pharisees did all these things, it would
appear to have done them no good, to the extent that they didn’t even recognise
God for who he was when he was standing right in front of them – to the extent
that they ended up plotting his death. These things, it turns out, weren’t just
inadequate, but unspeakably so.
So, God’s standards are far
higher than I realise. And equally, my human nature is more corrupt, more
perverse, more downright evil than I realise. Have a look at the seventh
chapter of Mark’s gospel.4 The first few verses deal with Jesus having
a go at the Pharisees for being pharisees5 – specifically, for
prioritising their own traditions over God’s word, thereby nullifying it. It’s
a shocking indictment indeed, considering what we saw last week about the
Pharisees’ understanding of the Law. But note what Jesus says next: he starts talking
about which things actually defile a person, and defines them as products of
the heart, the inner nature. The implication, therefore, is that whatever the
Pharisees do in order to try to please God, their endeavours can never succeed,
because the innate corruptness of their hearts means they are ultimately bound
to end up behaving in a corrupt manner.
It’s not as if the Pharisees
are unique in this trait, however. In actual fact, “none is righteous, no, not
one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.”6 So why does Jesus
seem to reserve his biting criticism only for the Pharisees? Well, there’s
something of an answer to be found in the next chunk of Mark 7. Jesus trots
over to Tyre and Sidon and runs into a Syrophoenician woman who begs him to get
rid of a demon that’s possessing her daughter. Jesus’ response is, “Let the children
be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to
the dogs.”
The implication being, he’s
addressing this woman as a dog – an uncomplimentary term not too dissimilar to
the kinds of things he calls the Pharisees. This woman’s reaction, however, is
striking. She says, “Yes, Lord.” She holds her hands up to the accusation. Yes.
Fair enough. I’m a dog, and you occupy a status infinitely higher than mine. I’m
a sinful mess undeserving of your attention, let alone your favour, and I own
the fact. “Yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,”
she adds. Even so, please help me. And her daughter is healed.
The Syrophoenician woman
already knew that she was sinful and Jesus was miles above her: “Yes, Lord.”
Elsewhere, Simon Peter already knew that he was sinful and Jesus was miles
above him: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”7 The
centurion at Capernaum already knew that he was sinful and Jesus was miles
above him: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say
the word, and my servant will be healed.”8 Jesus didn’t have to tell
them. They knew.
It wasn’t that the Pharisees
were particularly worse than anyone else. Everyone falls a million miles short
of God’s standards. Everyone is, by nature, enslaved to sin, a deserving object
of God’s wrath, incapable of doing anything to please him. The Pharisees’ real
problem was that they weren’t aware of the fact. So every harsh word, every vehement
rebuke, every jarring indictment on Jesus’ part was an opportunity for them to
wake up to it. Jesus told the Pharisees that they were sinful because they
desperately needed to know as much – because only by recognising their sin
would they be able to repent of it and access the kingdom of God. Indeed, he described
their sins to them in crystal-clear detail. His words, however harsh they sound
to our ears, were nevertheless words of love.
God’s impossibly high standards
held alongside our utterly corrupt nature would form a phenomenally depressing
picture without the knowledge of the gospel – that God sent his Son not only to
alert us to the desperateness of our situation, but to provide a solution for
it, even at the cost of his life. By our unwillingness to admit that we are
incapable, in and of ourselves, of pleasing God, pharisees like me cheat
ourselves out of the gospel: we refuse forgiveness by failing to acknowledge
that we need it.
Welcome to pharisee rehab. You
may have heard it said that the first step to solving a problem is admitting
that you have a problem. That’s also true here. Indeed, there are no other
steps. Admit that you have a problem and you can’t do a thing about it – and then
marvel at how God lavishes his mercy on you without condition or limit, how he
fulfilled the necessity of perfect justice through the sacrifice of his own
Son, how he is here again to meet you in grace after every relapse you have.
However often you catch yourself slipping back into your pharisaical habits,
apply the same solution every time. God’s grace is never diminished as you
realise more clearly the depth of your sin; rather, the sheer extent of it is,
in turn, thrown into even sharper relief.
Footnotes
1 Links to said preceding posts
are in the box on the right. But you already knew that.
2 Aware as I am that The
History Boys began life as a stage play and was only later adapted into a
film, I refer to the film in this post because I can access it via the wonders
of the TV archive known as Box of Broadcasts: http://bobnational.net/.
If you happen to belong to an organisation which offers access to BOB, I highly
recommend making use of it: pretty much everything that’s been on TV in the
past ten years or so is available either to watch immediately or to order.
3 That’s Matthew 23 again: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+23&version=ESVUK.
4 Go on, have a read: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+7&version=ESVUK.
The text itself is way more worth your time than anything I have to say about
it.
5 For the uppercase/lowercase
distinction, see ‘I, pharisee 1’. Ugh, look at me referencing myself like the
pretentious numpty I am.
7 See Luke 5 for the whole
story: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%205&version=ESVUK.
8 Either Matthew 8 or Luke 7
will do for this one. Just because we had Luke in the last footnote and I fancy
switching it up a bit, have the Matthew: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+8&version=ESVUK.
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