Accidental Pharisees Blog Series

I am currently going through the book Accidental Pharisees: Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity, and the Other Dangerous of Overzealous Faith of Larry Osborne with my men’s group in church every week. It has been a very interesting discussion with a group of men that I handle. But what is interesting is that no matter where we are in our stages of life as a Christian:

Passionate faith always has a dark side.

Pharisees are more than mere tidbits of ancient history. They were defined as one of God’s most zealous defenders but unfortunately, their sad transition to becoming Jesus’ arch nemesis is important for every Christian to understand. 

So I’ll be starting a 7 blog series about the dangers we need to recognize and avoid. We’ll look into how the words of Jesus uncover the early warning signs of a budding Pharisee and expose the subtle indicators of how we are treading the dangerous path of becoming an Accidental Pharisee.

To start things off, we will talk about how zealousness for Jesus can be a bad thing for us and how one’s journey to becoming an accidental Pharisee usually starts out innocently.

But first, who are the Pharisees?

According to GotQuestions.Org they are:

The Pharisees are mostly middle class businessmen, and therefore were in contact with the common man. The Pharisees were held in much higher esteem by the common man than the Sadducees. Though they were a minority in the Sanhedrin and held a minority number of positions as priests, they seemed to control the decision making of the Sanhedrin far more than the Sadducees did, again because they had the support of the people. Religiously, they accepted the written Word as inspired by God. At the time of Christ’s earthly ministry, this would have been what is now our Old Testament. But they also gave equal authority to oral tradition and attempted to defend this position by saying it went all the way back to Moses. Evolving over the centuries, these traditions added to God’s Word, which is forbidden (Deuteronomy 4:2), and the Pharisees sought to strictly obey these traditions along with the Old Testament. The Gospels abound with examples of the Pharisees treating these traditions as equal to God’s Word (Matthew 9:14;15:1-9;23:5;23:16,23,Mark 7:1-23;Luke 11:42). However, they did remain true to God’s Word in reference to certain other important doctrines. In contrast to the Sadducees, they believed the following:

1. They believed that God controlled all things, yet decisions made by individuals also contributed to the course of a person’s life.

2. They believed in the resurrection of the dead (Acts 23:6).

3. They believed in an afterlife, with appropriate reward and punishment on an individual basis.

4. They believed in the existence of angels and demons (Acts 23:8).

In short, the Pharisees:

a. Excelled in everything we spiritually admire

b. They were zealous for God

c. Completely committed to their faith. 

d. They were theogically astute, masters of biblical texts

e. They made up extra rules just in case they missed anything

d. Their embrace to spiritual disciplines (fasting, devotion, prayer, etc.) was second to none.

Now that we know who and what are the Pharisees, let’s talk a look on how we (yes we) end up being an Accidental Pharisee. The truth is that Accidental Pharisees are made up of people just like you and me, people who loved God, loved the Scriptures, and are trying their best to lived by them. The thing to note about Pharisees is just that, they’re accidental. No one plans to be one, you just end up being one. So here’s how it happens:

1. It starts out rather innocently and is often triggered by an opening event. It may be a mission trip, a conference, or a powerful new book. Sometimes it’s a small group experience or perhaps a leader who opens your eyes to the things you’ve never heard before.

2. You step out in faith. You make some big changes. You clean up areas of sin and compromise. You add new spiritual disciplines as you excitedly race off toward the front of the following-Jesus line. But as you press forward, it’s inevitable that you begin to notice that some people lag behind. And it’s at this point that your personal pursuit of holiness can morph into something dangerous: a deepening sense of frustration with those who don’t share your passionate pursuit of holiness.

3. If you allow your frustration to turn into disgust and disdain for people you’ve left behind, you’ll end up on a dangerous detour. Instead of becoming more like Jesus, you’ll become more like his archenemies, the Pharisees of old, looking down on others, confident in your own righteousness.

4. If you continue farther down the path of contempt for those who fail to keep up, you’ll end up in a place of arrogance. Fewer and fewer people will measure up to your definition of a genuine disciple. Inevitably, being right will become more important than being kind, gracious, or loving. Thinning the herd will become more important than expanding the kingdom. Unity will take a back seat to uniformity.

And your metamorphosis is complete. You become someone you never intended to be. You will be a full-fledged Pharisee. Accidental but still a Pharisee nonetheless.

The Good News for An Accidental Pharisee

Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.

(1 Corinthians 3:12-14)

 If we realize that our foundation is not found on our knowledge, status or our works and is only found on the Jesus, we can make our way back. Jesus didn’t called us to thin the herd, to gather the righteous, the disciplined, the excellent or the worthy disciples. He called us to care for the sick:

 

When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to His disciples, “Why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?” And hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:16-17)

 The important thing to remember is that people (like us) who have started down this path can still come to their senses, turn back and head home to Christ. There will always be an opportunity for a U-turn.The important thing to take heed of is that people who started down this path can still come to their senses, turn back and head home to God. There will always be an opportunity to make a U-turn.