Pharisees are Alive Today

The Pharisees are alive and well and living among us.

They must be. After all, some among this group of zealous hard-liners became first-generation Christians – and immediately gave the early Church a major challenge.

There’s no reason to believe they’re not still at it. More about that further on.

Ironically, their disturbing activities helped establish and define Church authority and give us broad clues as to what’s wrong with the schismatic Christian culture worldwide today.

Make no mistake. By “Church authority,” I mean the authority of the Holy Roman Catholic Church and the Pope. And by “schismatic Christian culture,” I mean the ever-proliferating protestant movement.

Reference the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 15, verses 1 through 19.

Verse 5: But some from the party of the Pharisees who had become believers stood up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and direct them to observe the Mosaic law.”

See? The same people who repeatedly attacked Jesus, trying to trick him into error with nit-picking details relating to the Mosaic Law, had transplanted themselves into the new Church and immediately set about creating knotty problems.

This one problem, the Church found necessary to resolve. And resolve, the Church did. Here’s how it goes:

Jesus Christ, who established His Church on earth, was the original earthly final authority. In Matthew 18 Jesus says, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.

“I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

By this action, Jesus gave to Peter the authority over the Church. He became, by a specific, direct command of Jesus Christ, the first Pope.

Peter, you may recall, was arguably the most imperfect of all the apostles, having denied Jesus three times.

Since then, each new pope has been selected from among humanity. Each has been in direct succession from Peter. Some Popes have been horrific, scandalous, even criminal, incestuous, murderous. Others have simply been poor leaders. Still others were saints. All have been human – as was Peter.

So the Pharisees kept pressing the circumcision matter – which is really a different question altogether. The real question is, are people to be required to become Jewish before they become Christian.

This is tantamount to saying a boy must become a Cub Scout before he can become a Boy Scout. Jesus did say salvation comes from the Jews – but we don’t see anywhere that one must come to Christ through the Jewish religion. The very idea is ludicrous.

There was enough continuing fuss over the circumcision issue that something had to be done.

In Acts 15, verse 2, Luke writes, “Because there arose no little dissension and debate by Paul and Barnabas with them, it was decided that Paul, Barnabas, and some of the others should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and presbyters about this question. They were sent on their journey by the church . . .”

They had decided to seek counsel with the Pope and the hierarchy. To our great and good benefit, to this day we as Catholic Christians benefit from this same kind of hierarchical chain-of-command authority.

Protestant churches do not have the advantage of a true hierarchy. They teach without mandate, without any but their own assumed authority. They presume authority which they do not have, which they haven’t been given, for which they haven’t asked.

In Acts 15, verse 24, the Letter of the Apostles, it is written “Some of our number went out without any mandate from us . . .”

Martin Luther was not mandated. John Calvin was not mandated. They were, both of them, Pharisees. To be sure, there were good reasons for the reformation, but without mandation?

When the meeting took place in Jerusalem, it was as if to test the mettle of the first pope. Peter took the bull by the horns. He well knew Jesus’ lessons having to do with the Law of hand-washing before eating and the plucking of grains of wheat on the Sabbath.

He knew this argument about circumcision was of the same ilk – it was a health question, not necessarily a law having to do with salvation.

Quoting first from Amos (9, 11-12) to give scriptural strength to his words, Peter said, “It is my judgment, therefore, that we ought to stop troubling the Gentiles who turn to God . . .”

See? The apostles and presbyters had met with Pope Peter and he had rendered his opinion. His decision stuck. He had the God-given authority to do that.

It was assuredly a wise decision. It would be one thing to experience circumcision at eight days of age; it would be entirely another to say to a 28-year-old gentile, “You can become a Christian but not until you get circumcised.”

Jesus had said he would send the Holy Spirit to be of assistance to these early Church leaders. This he did, demonstrated at Pentecost. When faced with the circumcision issue, the early authorities called upon the Holy Spirit – and wisdom was granted to them, to Peter.

Now. Who are these modern-day Pharisees? Myself, for one, to wit:

The Cowboy Church

North of Greeley at Lucerne, housed in a huge complex which once was a dance-hall, bar and restaurant, resides the very popular “Cowboy Church.”

On Sundays, the parking lot is full. Inside, a huge group of “cowboys” congregates. Many of these are men, and most of the men wear their “cowboy” hats.

Contrary to the most rudimentary of manners, they wear these hats indoors. In the presence of ladies. In a place which calls itself a house of the Lord.

The Cowboy Church exists for that reason, and that reason alone. Non-removable cowboy hats are the establishment’s raison d’être.

These erstwhile “cowboys” can, without any shred of gentlemanly manners, with not even a modicum of decorum, pridefully wear their beloved hats as if stuck to their balding heads, indoors, in the presence of ladies, in a house of God. The Virginian is turning in his grave.

This incenses me. This outrageous behavior is preposterous. How rude. How boorish. But wait . . .

I am wrong. Hat or no, manners or dress or lack of consideration for others, none of these things necessarily relates at all to salvation.

See? I fit right in that slot with the ancient Pharisees. So do a lot of people who serve in the Catholic hierarchy. Oh. But that’s a subject for another time.

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Last week’s puzzle solved: Mr. Tommy’s wording was somewhat confusing regarding the five dreams and the one “real” anecdote.

All six anecdotes were “true,” except that five were true reports of dreams and one was a true report from real life. The “real” story was about the airborne bomber as seen from Bent’s Old Fort.

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Word of the week: Rant. It’s from ranten or ranzen, of German origin, meaning to rave or to frolic. Today we think of it as talking in a loud, wild, extravagant way. In Britain, it could be slang for boisterous merrymaking.