Where did all the Pharisees go?
While He had a lot of time for those in need and was even quick to rescue those who had fallen to spiritual darkness, what is clear in the gospels is that Jesus of Nazareth absolutely despised the Pharisees.
Are we expected to believe that the human condition that gives rise to a “Pharisee” state of being vanished in the first century BC? Are we so narrow-minded as to think that a “Pharisee” is strictly a member of an overly legalistic Jewish sect and that we Christians are somehow exempt from such religious folly?
Are Pharisees alive today and do they continue to poison the well?
What if there was a “Pharisee Church” or a “Synagogue of Satan” as the book of Revelations warns about?
What would a Pharisee look like? What would a Pharisee say? How would they act and most importantly, what would a Pharisee church look like?
Perhaps the Pharisee pastor and his Pharisee church would look something like this:
- They would be experts in religious law but have no real relationship with Christ. That is why Christ says: “I never knew you”.
- Where Christ unifies the human family, Pharisees would concentrate on separating people into “them” and “us” – with the “us” being good people and the “them” being misguided, deluded or flat-out evil.
- They would be experts at judging everyone else on the slightest infraction of religious law, but they themselves would not listen to what God was trying to say. They cannot listen to what Christ is trying to say because they actually have no real relationship with Him. He has “spat them out”.
- Consequently, their prayers are short and loveless. They don’t want to bathe in the light of the resurrected Christ with deep soaking prayer because they have not put Christ at the head of their church or at the centre of their lives – because that is where they have enthroned themselves.
- Pharisees will want to shut down spiritual gifts in general and especially those that involve listening to what God is trying to communicate. They may actively interrupt when the Spirit of God is trying to speak, create a distraction or use their authority in the church to divert attention to something – almost anything else.
- Pharisees are dead terrified of any kind of prayer, system, practice, science or philosophy that would lead to introspection, repentance and ultimately their route back to Christ. They don’t want to look inside and do the personal hard yards required to experience a deeper relationship with Christ. As such their fear overwhelms them and they admonish anyone for such evil “wrong think”.
- Consequently, they are at war with any other kind of truth – including scientific truth. They cling only to what they see as religious truth because they don’t have relationship. Those with relationship in Christ don’t need everything in religion to be absolute truth. The strength of their relationship in Christ surpasses doctrine since the “law is written on their hearts”.
- They persecute the “prophets”. Because they don’t listen to what God is saying to them, He will send them prophets to be persecuted for trying to shake them out of their stupor. A “prophet” in this sense is simply someone firstly willing to listen to what God is trying to say and secondly obedient enough to act on His will. But the Pharisee and Pharisee pastor will have none of it. To Him, such “prophets” and any spiritual gifts that have been given to them for His purposes will be branded demonic.
- They use religious texts to try and put “God in a box”. This is their most grievous infraction against God and especially His unspeakably powerful, yet somehow also free-moving, love-filled and merciful Holy Spirit. They try to trap or even entomb Christ in a box of their own scriptural interpretation. Christ despises this because His love naturally wants to break boundaries, especially those that are entrenched in religion.
- Even though they may judge such a prophet as “demonic”, the Pharisee, for all of his bluster, is not confident enough in their faith to pray with or for a “prophet” – or perhaps anyone in whom the Holy Spirit is truly doing His work.
That’s because they are too scared to.
Their god is a small god with a lowercase g. Their religious god needs to be defended and gets affronted easily.
The God of a prophet is a big God. This God does not need protection and is more than infinitely capable of taking care of Itself. The Truth does not need to be defended – its authenticity is intrinsic to its nature.
This God is not on the “side” of the prophets. Rather, the prophets have simply aligned themselves to God by accepting: “Let your will be done”. Therefore, when Pharisees judge prophets it’s not the prophet that they judge – they judge the God that sent them. - The Pharisee church is probably big, loud, judgmental, critical and full of condemnation. Look for the fruits of the spirit. They will say one thing but do another. They will talk of the fruits of the spirit but will have none of their own.
- Pharisee pastors will shout a lot and beat their message into their flock. A real man of God can cut right to the soul with three softly-spoken words – or even a sideways glance – but always point you back to redemption, relationship and inner peace.
- Pharisees are spiritually dead. God reluctantly works in the Pharisee church – and then only because He has to in terms of upholding what He promised biblically. Because where two or more are gathered in His name so He will be there too. But you get the feeling that like you, He’s not overjoyed at being there and there is scant evidence to believe that God is alive in the church at all.
- Pharisees have been abandoned by God so demons constantly persecute them. They order God to exorcise and bind the demonic in others – but they lie awake at night tormented and choked by demonic forces themselves. Instead of seeking God’s face for protection as they should, the Pharisee priest or pastor lies to them and says that their torment is the “price” they pay for doing God’s work.
- To the Pharisee, the devil is under every bush because for them the devil really is under every bush. They are constantly persecuted by the demonic because they are not covered by relationship in Christ. They cry out “Lord, Lord” – but he cannot help them because He does not “know” them. The demons are aware of this and so they claim their legal right, and delight, in constantly harassing and tormenting them.
- Pharisees eagerly measure spiritual successes by the number of converts rather than the depth of relationship in Christ.
- Pharisees are too good for repentance or confession. Because they are such strict legalists, they make sure that they have no “fault” themselves. You would never hear them apologise for either something they themselves have done wrong or where they have been wrong as a church. To the Pharisee, both themselves and their church are perfect in every way and are beyond reproach.
- They lie. Silly little lies. Big silly lies. If you are sure that God is telling you something while praying they will explain to you why that’s not what He is saying. Somebody is lying.
- Pharisees have no compassion. Like the “bad comforters” in Job, Pharisees and the Pharisee Church will have no compassion for those in need. Anything that has gone wrong in life – no matter how terrible or unjustified – will be a consequence of your own actions. They will not offer solace. They will not help to shoulder your grief because they are completely devoid of compassion.
- Pharisees put people off. Their legalistic attitude, judgement and condemnation drives reasonable and faithful people away from Christ. They place insurmountable obstacles in front of those who truly want to know Him.
- Pharisees stand in the way of individual development in a relationship with Christ. While Christ died for you to have free direct access to God, they want to sew up that torn veil and ensure that they control access.
- The Pharisee will willfully break God’s laws, even those in the Ten Commandments to satisfy their own misguided “truths”. They will coerce the son of a prophet to dishonour his father. They will force a daughter to deny a loving mother. They will denounce the faithful, stable but imperfect family as demonic and try to drive wedges between the faithful. They put circles around people saying that those are the “them” and we are the “us” – when all people belong to Christ.
- Pharisees never grow. You can know a Pharisee for ten or more years and they don’t change. Their faith never develops and they are not in a process of “sanctification”. Pharisees are the same hateful, heartless and judgemental, law-based religious fanatics when you meet them as they are any number of years later.
- Pharisees have absolutely no sense of humour and they delight in pointing out how inappropriate laughter, joy and socialising is in others. They especially wish to suck the life out of anyone in leadership who would engage in what these see as such frivolous human activities.
- Pharisees are always on about the devil. It’s devil this and devil that. They talk more about the devil than they do about the glory of God – because in so doing the Pharisee and Pharisee church is really honouring their true master.
Christ despised the historical Pharisees and continues to despise the Pharisee “spirit” because Pharisees do not serve the same God at all. This is no minor spiritual error. This is no minor denominational disagreement.
Even so, Christ has an equally better plan for your life, for my life and, yes, for Pharisees too. Where the Pharisee’s heart is hard and unforgiving of our own apparent failures and “sinful” nature, we are called to be quite the opposite. We should be ever vigilant to help the Pharisees in our own lives develop past religious law and into a relationship with Christ.
If they would only stop what they are doing and just listen to what He is trying to say to them.
To this end, the goal of TCFC Tai Chi for Christians is to stop talking and to start listening. With Tai Chi for Christians, the Holy Spirit of Christ is invited to minister to us as we begin to work through the various breathing and stretching exercises. It can be life-changing to simply stop whatever you are doing in life and honestly and openly say: “Speak Lord, your servant is listening”.
As a contemplative system, TCFC Tai Chi is a surprisingly effective antidote to the “Pharisee” spirit because we are not asking for our will to be done, but rather we are listening to what His will is in our lives. We are not praying a shopping list of how we think our lives could be better. We are asking Him to do His will in us instead.