Shhh... Don't tell anyone, but Messiah wasn't the Greek peacenik adonis we make him out to be. Can you keep a secret? Ok, I'll tell you: This one time, Jesus got mad, really mad. In fact, he got so mad, he was violent. Yeah. Don't tell the folks in the pews, but Messiah wasn't exactly a pacifist.
Here's the dirty little secret from the New Testament:
Why was Messiah so angry? In our western mindset, we have it thoroughly ingrained into our liberated minds that most every act of violence is wrong, and that anger is wrong, and that intolerance is wrong.When he reached Jerusalem, Y'shua entered the Temple and found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the Temple, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market.
The chief priests and the Pharisees heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.
Couldn't Messiah just have tolerated the beliefs of the money changers? Hey, they were just folks trying to make a living. How intolerant. What a bigoted, Jewish fundamentalist was this Jesus character. Look at that seething anger - how un-Western, how un-gentile of him! Somebody needs to free his mind to peace, love, and understanding. Religious nut-job with a violent streak, just another religious extremist!
It is no wonder Christian folks don't talk too much about this here in the Western gentile world, where anger will send you to a psychiatrist and violence will send you to prison.
We live in a world where even Christian preachers don't want to talk about this kind of thing. Recently, a Baptist Christian preacher awkwardly argued on his blog that the author of Psalm 137 was acting immorally when he pleaded with God for the destruction of Israel's captors. Here's Psalm 137, for the record:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
How can we sing the songs of Yahweh
while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
Remember, O Yahweh, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
"Tear it down," they cried,
"tear it down to its foundations!"
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us-
he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
Psalm 137 put to music by Lamb:
This Protestant preacher told me, "See? The psalmist was wrong for such a horrible thought. Infants dashed on rocks -- my God. This is not my religion."
If you're living in the Western world and you're a gentile, you may very well sympathize with the pastor's sentiment. Heck, even if you're a westernized Jew, you probably sympathize with the Protestant preacher's assertion. Our western culture and Hellenized thinking is spreading all over world. This kind of thinking is prevalent and infectious, because everybody wants peace and nobody likes to talk about fighting evil. Evil should be tolerated, not fought. Heck, who's to say what's evil? There is no good and evil in our world. Everything's grey. Maybe you're evil for thinking I'm evil. Maybe we're all a little evil. Maybe God is evil. Maybe there is no God.
That's the point were at in today's culture.
Already you're thinking in the back of your mind, "Boy, this Judah guy is a little crazy. He's a little out there. Red flags!"
I must confess to you, dear blog reader, I'm not Seeker-Sensitive. I concede, I am not living a purpose-driven life, my apologies to Protestant pastor Rick Warren.
Now that you're fully suspicious of my theology and have reported me to the proper authorities, let it be known this peacenik kind of thinking is evident not from just one anecdotal piece of evidence. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, pastor of US Presidential candidate Barack Obama, says the same thing in this sermon to his church, demonizing the psalmist for his plea for justice:
The above YouTube video, in an attempt to clear Obama's name and his pastor's name by showing the infamous sermon in context, only further damns this thinking.
Of course, unlike the psalmist, the good Reverend Wright has already forgot Jerusalem, if not become one of its most vocal critics.
An atheist man and a pacifist will try to convince you of the evil nature your beliefs, pointing to the Tenakh (Old Testament) where God approves of King Josiah's violent intolerance of the Baal worshipers (destroying the altars, killing the prophets), or where God commands the Levites to slaughter those who bowed to the golden calf. Or where God commands Israel to go and take the land God gave to them, driving out the inhabitants. 3 examples in a sea of many more.
What is the deal with anger and violence? Obviously, we have way too many people committing acts of violence in the name of God. Yeah, it's bad. But is there ever a time for righteous anger? Righteous violence? Is there ever a time when you should be zealous for God to the point of action -- even violence?
Let's answer the question why Messiah was zealous in righteous anger for the Temple, even to the point of violence.
I've heard some bizarre teachings on this. A foolish secular man, in his understandable and predictable need to explain Jesus' actions in the context of today's culture, once told me Messiah was angry in Temple because sacrifices were going on; Messiah was only trying to save the poor animals who were victims of men's foolish, deprecated religion.
I find this explanation particularly absurd, it was the Lord Himself who instituted sacrifices for sin as early on as Cain and Abel. He had put it in writing at Mt. Sinai when the Torah was written, and finally he made this full and complete with the sacrifice of Messiah as atonement for the sin of all.
The answer to why Messiah was angry and violent is not because sacrifices were going on.
I think the answer to this question is straightforward: the money changers were selling goods in the place God lived among us, the house of God, if you will. The Tabernacle, and later the great Temple in Jerusalem -- both were built to the precise, detailed specifications God gave to Israel in the Torah, both are pictures of what's in Heaven -- these contained the Holy of Holies: the innermost part of sanctuary where God's presence dwelt above the Ark of the Covenant.
Therefore, having folks buying and selling dirtied the holiest place on earth. If they were buying and selling on the sabbath, they were also breaking one of God's commandments.
In your western mind, you may think little of dirtying the Temple -- as a Christian, you probably could care less! And breaking the sabbath, well, that is now part of your routine.
But in the Hebrew mindset, one that more properly aligns with God's ways, such acts were so abhorrent and so despicable, Messiah found it necessary to step up for God and violently set things straight.
This is what drove Messiah to righteous, zealous anger.
Too often Christians are told that all forms of anger and violence are wrong, so this passage comes across to us as out-of-character for this peacenik Christ we've painted him to be. We often forget the acts of righteous anger found in Scripture -- whether Messiah at the Temple, the Levites after the golden calf, Josiah after the pagan altars -- these are things God deemed righteous, even though they do not fit with our no-violence, no-anger politically correct society and modern Christian doctrines. We also tend to forget that Messiah is the Lion of Judah who will come back to judge the nations and wage war against the enemies of Israel, toppling the false religious systems and haughty governments of today's secular society. That will be a sight to see! What will you, a gentile pacifist Christian, think of the violent Jewish revolutionary who calls himself "Messiah"?
Messiah was angry and violent towards those turning the Father's house into a marketplace. Messiah, the same one who said, "Blessed are the peace-makers" acted in righteous violence when the time was right. He was zealous for the Temple, even more than the rabbis of his time. How many Christians today can say the same?