We all know the Pharisees, the "hypocrites" Jesus excoriated repeatedly during His earthly ministry. He denounced their hyper-scripturalism that missed God, their traditions they made equal with (or greater than) God's words, their political-social agenda that ignored people's suffering. The Pharisees' self-congratulatory pretence earned Jesus' fury: religiosity separate from God always does.
The pastor's sermon this week was on the parable Jesus told about the Pharisee and the publican. But it was the introductory sentence that hit me: "And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt." (Luke 18:9)
It's the underlying mindset of partisan divisiveness: we ("I," and those who agree with me) are righteous and right, and "they" (those we've chosen to contrast ourselves with) are evil and wrong. Think, for example, of "Christian conservatives' " attitudes toward those they call "liberals" and "godless."
Indeed, there are probably other similarities between the "Christian conservatives" of our time and the Pharisees. If so, Jesus regards them the same.
