"The Pharisee and the Child"

For the next several days, I want to share some of the profound insights of Dr Brennan Manning:

"Pharisaic Judaism comprised a relatively small group of seperated ones who almost two centuries before Christ, in order to preserve the Jewish faith from foreign dilution, had given themselves to lives of vigilant observance of the Mosaic Law. Their lives were one long rehearsal, a symphony orchestra tuning up endlessly by playing tortured variations of the Law.

Before the Jewish exile, when the spirit of the covenant was vibrantly alive, the people felt safe in the shadow of God's love. In the pharisaic period, as the understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures deteriorated, the Jews felt safe in the shadow of the law. Obviously, the gospel of grace presented by the Nazarene Carpenter was an outrage.

The attitude of the pharisee is that keeping the law enamors him to God. Divine acceptance is secondary and is conditioned by the pharisee's behavior. For Jesus the circumstance is diametrically opposite. Being accepted, enamored, and loved by God comes first, motivating the disciple to live the law of love. "We are to love, then, because He loved us first" (1 John 4:19).

Suppose a child have never experienced any love from his/her parents. One day he/she meets another child whose parents show him/her with affection. The first child says to himself/herself: I want to be loved like that too. I have never experienced it, but I'm going to earn the love of my mother and father by my good behavior.

So to gain the affection of his/her parents, this child brushes their teeth, makes their bed, smiles, minds their p's and q's, never pouts or cries, never expresses a need, and conceals all negative feelings.

This is the way of the pharisees. They follow the law impeccably in order to induce God's love. The initiative is theirs. Their image of God necessarily locks them into a theology of works. If God is like the insufferable Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, eager to find fault with anybody and everybody, the pharisee must pursue a lifestyle that minimizes mistakes.

Then, on Judgment Day, he can present God with a perfect slate and the reluctant Deity will have to accept it. The psychology of the pharisee makes a religion of washing cups and dishes, fasting twice a week, and paying tithes of mint, dill, and cumin very attractive.

What an impossible burden! The struggle to make oneself presentable to a distant and perfectionistic God is exhausting. Legalists can never live up to the expectations they project on God for there will always be a new law, and with it a new interpretation, a fresh hair to be split by the keenest ecclesiastical razor.
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From ABBA'S CHILD: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging Brennan Manning (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1994).