Levite in the story of the good Samaritan. Here it is again. Our Pharisee comforts himself with all the sins he had not committed, like robbery or adultery. This is always good for the peace of our conscience, because of course such negative obedience forms a convenient smokescreen behind which we may conceal the many sins we have committed.
It's the kind of attitude which, as we said in our second study, lies behind a great deal of evasion of social responsibility today. It enables people to see a murder committed on a city street and do nothing about it, because they aren't personally holding the knife.
It's also the reason, incidentally, that religion has such a killjoy image in many people's minds. All those 'thou shalt nots'. Many think of God as a prohibitive spoilsport who wants to stop us doing all the things we want to do. Joy Davidman tells a lovely story of a missionary trying to convert an African chief. On being told that a long list of sins were indeed prohibited by Christian morality, he remarked that he was much too old to commit any of them anyway. 'So to be old and a Christian, they are the same thing!'
For many, that is exactly what being a Christian is: being old, being past it, giving oneself to God when the devil wants nothing more to do with us. They picture Christianity as something sapless and joyless, the enemy of ah delights. And they think that way because so many religious people are trying to escape guilt by defining obedience in purely negative terms.
Secondly, he majors on legalistic obedience. He lists all the unnecessary good works of supererogation which he doesn't really have to do at all. Like fasting twice a week, when Moses said once a year was quite enough; or giving a tithe of absolutely everything he had—even the herbs in the kitchen which he used for flavouring his food—when Moses said a tithe of one's income was adequate.
Once again, legalism of this type is a classic method of
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