It has been noted that the Dali Lama said, "“Learn and obey the rules very well, so you will know how to break them properly.”
It has been noted that Jesus did not begin his public ministry until he was 30 years old, which means that he had a long time to learn the rules of the times. The thing is that when he breaks the rules of his religion, say healing on the Sabbath, we look at that and say, "well yes, that obvious! It should not matter when a person is healed but we should rejoice that the healing happened."
But this is the beauty of breaking the rules properly. When the rules are properly broken then to later generations it looks obvious as to why no others would break the same rules. Eat with sinners, throw out money changers, speak out to those who's personal holiness keeps them from social holiness, equal rights to people - breaking these rules seems so obvious today.
Ethical hindsight is something that generally makes us feel superior in a number of ways to the people of the past. "I would never own slaves" or "I would have fought with those for women's rights" or "I would have grabbed a whip with Jesus and drove out the money changers also". Ethical hindsight also makes it difficult to see what the next rules are that need to be broken.
It seems like many of us go down a list and check them off:
Slavery abolished - check
Women's rights - check
Child labor laws - check
Health care for all people - check
Ethical hindsight gives us a false sense of "we have arrived" and that all the really big justice issues are resolved. But we know that is not the case.
So if you are reading the Bible and saying to yourself, "Yea, I would have done the things that Jesus did in his day to advance social justice." I would ask you what are you doing today to advance the cause of justice?
It has been noted that Jesus did not begin his public ministry until he was 30 years old, which means that he had a long time to learn the rules of the times. The thing is that when he breaks the rules of his religion, say healing on the Sabbath, we look at that and say, "well yes, that obvious! It should not matter when a person is healed but we should rejoice that the healing happened." But this is the beauty of breaking the rules properly. When the rules are properly broken then to later generations it looks obvious as to why no others would break the same rules. Eat with sinners, throw out money changers, speak out to those who's personal holiness keeps them from social holiness, equal rights to people - breaking these rules seems so obvious today.
Ethical hindsight is something that generally makes us feel superior in a number of ways to the people of the past. "I would never own slaves" or "I would have fought with those for women's rights" or "I would have grabbed a whip with Jesus and drove out the money changers also". Ethical hindsight also makes it difficult to see what the next rules are that need to be broken.
It seems like many of us go down a list and check them off:
Slavery abolished - check
Women's rights - check
Child labor laws - check
Health care for all people - check
Ethical hindsight gives us a false sense of "we have arrived" and that all the really big justice issues are resolved. But we know that is not the case.
So if you are reading the Bible and saying to yourself, "Yea, I would have done the things that Jesus did in his day to advance social justice." I would ask you what are you doing today to advance the cause of justice?