Sympathy for the Pharisee

    

I once told my mom she might go to jail for using her emergency flashers without a reason. In our Volkswagen Bus, hazard light knob was so tempting that I pulled it out once while she was driving down our back alleyway. My mom pushed it back in and told me that she could get a ticket for misusing them. I had no idea that was illegal and I realized that she had gotten a speeding ticket some time back. I thought perhaps the law was draconian enough that any second violation of the law would not result in a ticket, but incarceration. So, jail for having the hazard lights on.

     Back then I had a strict sense of right and wrong. You were not supposed to do wrong, or bad things would be done to you and you deserved it. So one day I was looking at our bathroom scale and asked my dad what the words: NOT LEGAL FOR TRADE meant. My dad explained it meant that the scale was only for people. He did not tell me it meant the scale wasn’t intended to weigh items for sale. But I knew what the word “legal” meant; it meant the law. So months later when my aunt was getting ready for an airplane flight and she put her suitcases on her bathroom scale, I nearly lost my mind. My aunt was breaking the law, how could she do that? All the way to the airport I expected to be pulled over by a scowling policeman to whom I would try to explain that I knew better.

     Growing up like that made me always root for the good guy. I never wanted to be the robber in cops and robbers and I did not particularly like to break the rules, ever. One might think this made me the kind of student teachers like. But I was judgmental. I could not abide others breaking the rules, so I was a tattletale.

     Why couldn’t everyone just follow the rules and be nice to each other? I didn’t get it. There’s a word for people like I was. Reluctant to extend grace, stick fast to the rules, even if it meant sending their own mother to jail for driving down an alley with hazard lights on. You could call us Pharisees.

     I understand how those religious leaders and teachers of the law might have felt. Their identity was fixed into the laws they followed so well. That feeling of security that you’re right and everyone else is wrong helps one sleep at night. No wonder they got so terribly upset when that man from a backwards town came along. People liked him even though he broke the rules. And he seemed to think that all those rules that made them feel so good and secure were a hindrance. Look what he did on the Sabbath, right in front of them sometimes. But worst of all, that right feeling they loved, the identity they found in their rules, that might have begin to feel weak against everything this man did and said.

     So would they give up the old ways, which it turned out were nothing more than a perversion of the original plan? And would they adapt to the new ways, which were in fact, the simple plan God had all along? Sadly for them, they tried to get rid of the usurper to their ways. The source of their discomfort had to go. And three days after they thought they had succeeded, not only had their plans been thwarted, but sin and death had been conquered too.

If I have been living back then, I might have been a nice, law-abiding guy who followed the rules and thought his place was secure. I might have prayed in the temple, thanking God I wasn’t like those others, those luggage-weighing sinners. I don’t know if I would have felt the need for forgiveness or grace. I could have been a Pharisee.   

     Thank God my sin hurt me enough that I recognized my need for Him. Thank God I am broken enough now to know I am right there with every other sinner.

     There are still times where I feel so very comfortable in my life of regulation and control. Which means when the inevitable upset comes along, I become pretty bent out of shape. And I stay that way until I let go of my intense desire for order and replace it with submission to God. Most of the time I can’t do that on my own and I have to coast to the side of the road with my hazard lights flashing. Against such thing there is no law.

    

Misplaced Indignation

     I looked carefully at the ticket the waiter handed me and shook my head. I had been a pizza cook at the Lahaina Pizza hut close to nine months and thought I had seen everything. But this was too much. I called the waiter over.

     “Look at this,” I told him. “These X’s here mean cancel that item. You said these people want no cheese on their pizza.”

     The waiter confirmed that was what he meant.  I tried to stay calm and moved closer to this new guy who seemed to know nothing and needed a little talking to from an experienced pizza man.

     “You can’t have a pizza without cheese,” I said. “Cheese is what a pizza is all about.”

     “That’s how they want it,” he explained. I looked at the ticket and then into the dining area at the table with a young couple, tourists most likely, who thought they could order a pizza without cheese. I didn’t know how to tell this poor naïve waiter that he had gone too far indulging them.

     “You can’t have a pizza without cheese…” I repeated.

     “Yes you can,” said the manager walking by.

     I was incredulous. How did this man get to be manager?

     “They can’t do this,” I protested. “It’s a veggie pizza. Without the cheese, all the vegetables will burn. You can’t have a pizza without cheese, you just can’t.”

     We made the pizza. Once it was in the oven, I called some other cooks over and pointed to the table and explained that those people had ordered a pizza without cheese.

     “Eeeewww,” they all said. I felt validated.

     In addition to that validation, I felt like a monstrous injustice had been committed and told all my friends and anyone who would listen for the next week about it.

     And today, 26 years later, the incredulity I feel now is how much indignation I felt back then. Really David? Let the people order what they want and just let it go. When that was happening, the Berlin wall still stood. Injustice of all kind was worldwide. I got my knickers in a knot about how I thought people ought to want their pizza.

     So I’m older now. There is nothing like a few years to soften someone up and give them a sense of perspective, right? Maybe not. How about having children? That might help someone realize what’s important in life. Two years overseas helps foster a healthy sense of perspective. Granted, it was in a developed country with clean water and impressive infrastructure. And if that didn’t calm me down and realize what is important, having a child diagnosed with cancer at three years old is something. Talking care of her for three and a half years, going through scans, surgeries and all sorts of trials did quite a lot to help me realize what was important and see the big picture.

     But did this last?

     A piece of furniture disappeared at work last week. It vanished without explanation and no-one knew where it had gone or who took it. People at work were a little disturbed. I was particularly upset. I had been one of the last one’s out of the building that night and had walked right by the shelf that had been noticed missing the next day. I took it personally. And even though I didn’t visibly bluster, I bottled up some intense feelings.

     Then the furniture piece was found in a locked closet. So now it’s back where it belongs. But the question of who, why, when and how might never be answered. And that still bugs me. When I updated my family that the shelf had been found, there was little joy or interest. I probably appeared emotional when I told about it. Jamie, who is almost 11 years old, asked me if I was going to blog about it. Prajna rolled her eyes at the thought of me venting my frustrations over such a petty issue.

     But I was intrigued. I thought about the indignation I felt over such a little thing. I thought I had gotten over that. I thought I had learned to pick my battles and not sweat the small stuff. Was it enough that I didn’t burst out in anger and keep my feelings to myself over such a little thing? I didn’t insult anyone’s taste in pizza this time. Did I deal with this in a healthy way?

     I don’t know. I do know this, if I found out who moved the furniture and locked it in a closet I would want to throw burned vegetables at them. I might not be over this. Most of all, I wish I knew why they did it. And it all comes down to this: I might never know.

     I might never know. But one day I’ll get to heaven where there will be no sorrow, pain or confusion. I will see my daughter again. Maybe in heaven there’s a library with all kinds of data someone can look up and it would have this incident listed. Or maybe I won’t care about it anymore. Maybe once I get to heaven there will be plenty of cheesy pizza.

    

           

Did I just say that?

     If you say something regarding something that someone passionately believes in then you run the risk of upsetting them. There are people rioting and even people dying because of alleged slanderous or libelous rhetoric. There are political parties with supporters of every degree of sincerity about how they feel things ought to be. Don’t bother to mention politics or religion on any social network group. Social Justice, equality, tolerance and intolerance, free speech and a plethora of other seditious subjects are all over the media, social and mainstream. And I would like to promise that my blog will remain free of inflammatory proselytizing. Early in the Roadwalker Blog’s postings I went out and spoke my beliefs, as if to get them out of the way. So what am I doing scattering two-dollar words out and hinting at current events?

     I want to confess. I have not only been in distribution of unkind words, I have reacted badly to their reception too. I am saying that I understand how sometimes just the wrong words can get someone’s knickers in a knot to the point where they want to be violent. I remember decades ago, and with my weird memory I can still hear the spoken words. I must have been in the fifth grade. I had a few friends and I was very much into Star Wars. Back then it wasn’t all that cool to like it as much as I did. While most kids listened to disco music I went home and played my John Williams soundtrack. I lived and breathed Star Wars. And one day one of the kids I hung out with discovered a way to infuriate me. They laughed at my reaction as I charged at them trying to undo what they said. They just repeated the same two words and enraged me more. The two words they spoke: “Star Bores”.

     How could they? How could anyone disrespect the greatest thing that I had ever seen? Of course I took it personally. I loved Star Wars so much I had prayed it would win best picture. Saying that movie’s name incorrectly and implying that it was anything less than perfect was unimaginable. It couldn’t be allowed. 

     It sounds pretty trivial now. Thank God I eventually got over that.

     When I worked with juvenile offenders at the boy’s placement facility I saw something similar. Boys would take their neighborhoods so seriously that they felt compelled to fight someone just for a simple insult. You could precede the name of their street with the word “boom”, (as if you were blowing it up or shooting it) and that was enough to get a death threat.

     The boy's 'hoods were how they defined themselves. Now I’m getting closer to current events. Now I am running the risk of stating my opinion. I understand that there are some people who are hungry for power and will use others to feed that hunger by stoking hate and violence. I understand that there are a billion or so people who practice their religion peacefully and are brought down by a few radical splinters. And I understand that there will always be people on the outside who use crises like this to further their own agenda.

     I seem to claim to be understanding quite a lot today. I don’t really. I don’t have a solution at least. In fact I just want to state my view and move on and drink my coffee. One of the things I claimed to at least have a slight understanding of is how it feels to have your beliefs attacked. And I really just wish that the attackers here, the propagators of the inflammatory communication, would just sit on it. Oh yes, we have free speech and God bless America for not stopping this at their level. But who could say they didn’t know what the reaction would be to things like this? Is this doing anybody any good besides the few power-hungry leaders of splinter factions?

     Yes, I’m a rather conservative Christian who takes John 14:6 literally. But I don’t think that means that Christ Followers should be doing things that lead to stirring up hate and violence.

     There, I did it. I got up on my soapbox again. I try to stay off it, really. And it’s mostly as a courtesy to others. But lately it’s just what I’m thinking about. Sometimes I want to blog just what I'm thinking about. Rest assured, I have only one other blog in mind about the presidential race and I won't post it next week and it will be somewhat flippant. Unless I start thinking about anything serious, next week will be a cheerful blog, long overdue. Now,I’ll just kick that soapbox under the deck now and finish my coffee.