{"id":4221,"date":"2022-09-07T01:45:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T01:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4221"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:49","slug":"pharisees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4221","title":{"rendered":"PHARISEES"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some of my more progressive Christian friends have recently been posting articles written by a well-known progressive pastor. This man seems to consider a majority of conservative Christians to be his enemies. (Especially if they hold a certain former president in esteem to any degree.) He spills a lot of ink denigrating them.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He goes out of his way to stir his liberal audience against these &#8220;Pharisees&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Have you noticed that the accusation of &#8220;Pharisee&#8221; is deployed in the church in similar ways to how &#8220;Nazi&#8221; is in the world?\u00a0 When we Christians search our arsenal for some label to lob in-house to cause maximum destruction, we can&#8217;t do better than &#8220;Pharisee&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like Nazis:<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Pharisees have a well-deserved bad reputation.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Pharisees are figures from history but are still around today, just not quite as organized and official.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Pharisees make a convenient enemy. A great punching bag. You can verbally beat up a Pharisee with impunity. After all, who is going to step in to defend a Pharisee?\u00a0<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Furthermore, Jesus Himself fought against the Pharisees. (So they are enemies of God!) He called them snakes and whitewashed tombs. He told them they were children of Satan.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still &#8211; he said these things to their faces.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jesus never whipped up a crowd of His disciples to hate the Pharisees.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, He confronted them.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No, He didn&#8217;t badmouth them behind their backs.*<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He <b><i>did <\/i><\/b>once warn His disciples not to adopt the <i>attitudes<\/i> of the Pharisees but his words were simple, straightforward, and free of hyperbole and self-righteousness. He simply said, &#8220;Guard yourselves against the yeast of the Pharisees.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some of my more progressive Christian friends have recently been posting articles written by a well-known progressive pastor. This man seems to consider a majority of conservative Christians to be his enemies. (Especially if they hold a certain former president in esteem to any degree.) He spills a lot of ink denigrating them.\u00a0 He goes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4222,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4221\/revisions\/4222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}