Warning: Major spoilers. Do not read if you have any desire to ever watch the show.
After viewing the show I had been waiting for ever since theories began circulating about a remake of the classic Prisoner series, I scoured the web to gauge what sorts of impressions, thoughts, and perspectives it was creating among the viewing audience. Was this show communicating and interacting with others in much the same way it did with me? Apparently not. Like many others with an interest in the show, I am a die-hard fan of the original. However, I seem to have parted ways with most of its critical viewing audience. I find myself in a familiar situation where the one show I thought was so brilliant and incredible is the one show that gets panned, dismissed, or glossed over. For instance, it seems to me that The Matrix: Reloaded is ostensibly superior to either of the other films in the trilogy, followed by Revolutions. And I think the reason is the same as it was for Reloaded: people don’t understand or just don’t get it. In The Prisoner (2009), what people expected or wanted isn’t want they got. But that is very, very good indeed. This post will focus on just one aspect that has really delivered something that blows (or should have blown) the mind: subversion of American (U.S.) political and economic perspective.
Brian Wilson was a genius. He wanted to create the definitive American music. In the process, he became a prisoner of his own making. He went insane. But after confronting himself and destroying the Village, he escaped and found his way back to the real world where he was finally able to complete his creation. He called it Smile. And it was good. So what was the definitive AMERICAN music doing playing throughout many pivotal parts of the remake of a BRITISH television series (anyone notice the cover of a Pet Sounds vinyl in Michael’s apartment)? And why place the conscious reality in the heart of NEW YORK instead of LONDON? Perhaps you caught the subtle references to terrorism and suicide bombing, or maybe that symbol of American freedom, those twin towers, gleaming in their memorial to the happy
and content
life of its residents in the mental/subconscious realm whilst standing as bastions of protection
and healing
in the other? This is not the original Prisoner, no matter the atavisms. Though the theme is the same as it was before (tyranny), this show is making a political statement that speaks to us, now, in a way the original cannot. The original was making statements about Socialism, which was the major European threat of that era. Today, now, there is a new threat posed by the American front–Fascism–and the remake has engaged it with every bit of vigor as the original did its own. It seems people were expecting another kind of McGoohan to come along and Caviezel was certainly not that. But the kind of answer presented this time is not the same as the original. This is an American answer, spurred on by an American dilemma. A McGoohan would not have fit the coat, badge, and shoes.
In the first series, evil was wrought and sustained by subordinating personal freedom and liberty to the interests, decisions, and control of the state. In the end, Six’s resistance and will found its completion, and the answer to the tyrant and its evil, in the destruction of the absolute power and influence of the state and by restoring autonomy to all. In the second series, evil is wrought and sustained by subordinating personal freedom and liberty to the interests, decisions, and control of an autocratic corporation. In this case, the answer is the nobility
and high moral
vision of the one who controls, coerces, and subjugates the citizens through the power of the corporation. In the end, Six does not destroy the tyrant, but steps into its shoes to remake society, regardless of its will, without its choice or consent, and no matter the cost, according to his own high moral
and noble
vision. He has not, like McGoohan, destroyed the number. Has has merely replaced the old number with a different sort of number. In the first Prisoner, Six’s resignation was detrimental to the tyrant because it meant he was refusing to allow the state to make his decisions for him. In the second, Six’s resignation was detrimental to the tyrant because it meant he was refusing to allow a corporation to have autocratic power to decide and do for people what it believes is best for them. But this very different Six is able to become the head of the corporation (thus reversing his opposition and annulling his resignation) because he believes that right makes might—and he believes he is right. Like his former ambulatory companion, we can only shed a tear at the horror of what Six is about to become because we—not just Americans but even those outside America—are seeing and experiencing it vividly. We have watched as the rights, liberties, prosperity, and security of the people becomes destroyed by our government1 and by the whim of rich and powerful corporate gods like Wall Street and the Federal Reserve2. America is in pain and that pain will continue for a long, long time to come, destroying both people within and without the country as well as the companies that feed off them, until we reject Fascism and throw down the new #2, the creation of BOTH Republican and Democratic parties.
Rethink Afghanistan: Christianity and the Global War on Terror
featuring Jake Diliberto and Glen Stassen
Thursday, Oct 22, 7:00-9:00 PM, Fuller Theological Seminary, Travis Auditorium
In light of the recent escalation of the US presence in Afghanistan, and the 8th year anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, the conversation has often evaded Christians. What are we supposed to think about the global war in light of our faith?
Jake is a Fuller student, and a decorated marine veteran of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Africa. His is a unique story of transformation from a maker of violence to a just-peace peacemaker. He now questions US military policy and the US presence in the Middle East. Jake has testified before congress, and is the founder of Veterans for Rethink Afghanistan,
an organization which has mobilized 20 million peace
activists. Come to hear his story, and why we need to rethink Afghanistan.
Peace and Justice Advocates will show a portion of the poignant documentary created by Rethink Afghanistan. Fuller’s Christian Ethics Professor Dr. Glen Stassen will offer a theological and ethical reflection on the situation.
It is always exciting to stand among a group of Christians who are seriously seeking a way to achieve a good end through nonviolent means instead of supporting violence as a means to that end or even simply accepting it as a necessary evil. More often than not, I stand alone. Even Anabaptists and Mennonites like myself (we who are the historical Peace Church of Protestantism) are divided on the issue. There are large numbers of Anabaptists who have chosen to follow Luther’s two kingdom
dichotomy in which YHWH has willed two different kingdoms to exist side-by-side (the church and the world), providentially ordaining that one should operate one way (do no violence or evil = the church) and one the other (do violence and what would be considered evil of a Christian in order to maintain justice and peace = the world).
On the other hand, even among a group of Christians seeking an end to war and violence like the one meeting this Thursday in Pasadena, there will be some who are there for reasons that I do not share, like, for instance, because they are leftist, liberal Democrats who are pushing their political party’s propaganda and/or agenda, or because they have false notions of social, religious, and political realities, or even, perhaps, because they are stirred more by emotions, guilt, and even false guilt, than they are by reason. Last time I attended one of these meetings, it seemed to me that frightening statistics concerning the escalation in major international terrorist attacks were being fallaciously shoehorned into a polemic against the U.S.’s support and use of torture instead of acknowledging the many other things that have contributed significantly to the dumbfounding rise in terrorist violence that we have seen in the West over the past decade. Hopefully, those attending the meeting this time around will be more willing to struggle with the truths of the matter and not what those in the group wish those truths would be.
Today is both a sad and happy day in California. The California Supreme Court–after ruling that prohibiting gay marriage was anti-Constitutional and then allowing 18,000 gay couples to be married–nevertheless upheld the people’s will to change the State Constitution and to make the terrible injustice of Prop 8 a reality. I think that the California Supreme Court did the right thing in upholding the will of the people to make their Constitution and to decide for themselves what they will legally allow and what they won’t (much better the people decide what they want than government decide for them!). And yet what the majority decided is, in my opinion, a great and disastrous inhumanity. I feel like I’m living back in the days of Martin Luther King when he was speaking and marching and protesting the injustice and the inhumanity of our nation first against African-Americans and then against those we demonized in Vietnam. It seems like no matter all the progress we have made, we have returned to where we were before. And it is startling to think that there are now parts of Europe like Denmark and Belgium that are MORE free and just than California–at least on this front. And yet, there is great good in the free will of humanity to make their own choices and to be self-governed–to be able to make WRONG choices. Ultimately, I think right will win out and the choices of gay couples will no longer be coerced, oppressed, and controlled by the wills of others. And then we can work on the next injustice. But until then, here we are.
So last year was the 10 year anniversary of the film Gattaca. It’s an interesting film that questions whether science really has all the answers when it comes out smarting Nature. It puts us in a world where if you where not genetically enhanced you are a second class citizen divorced of all the rights we enjoy now, all because you are a health risk, since science can supposedly predict before birth exactly what you will die from. Have you ever sat back and thought about what if the technology shown in that film was available to us today, whether we should use it or it not?
I tend think about these things any time I watch a great Sci-fi film like Gattaca, and then find my self wondering if and when any of the films’ predictions will come true. Take blade runner for example, it predicted that by 2015 that we would have flying cars and so over run in pollution in LA that we would have Acid rain all of the time. Well we have the acid rain but still no flying cars, and LA is cleaner than it has been in years, mainly due to advances in energy efficient cars and machinery, granted we still have a ways to go, to really clean the City up for good, but it’s in a better position then what Blade Runner assumed we would be at by now.
Which brings me back to Gattaca…
- Do you think in our life time we will be able to genetically enhance our children during conception?
- When do you think we will have such technology available to us, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years or more?
- If do end up creating that technology do you think that our society will fall into the same traps as Gattaca depicted in the film? If so why?
As I’ve been pondering these questions lately, I found it weird that, today I happened to stumble upon something that excited me as much as it frightened me, at how close we really are to having a world just as Gattaca predicted it could be.
History is not a blind, arbitrary road. Its course is paved by years of previous paths laid down, as they were, by those that preceded them. Unfortunately, dead ends don’t usually cause new roads to be built. Rather, they cause an attempt to build bridges that extend the dead end beyond our perceivable present or result in a route that is entirely reactionary and only tries to veer around the obstacle. Both are inevitably detrimental. This is an apocalyptic
history of how we got to where we are today and where I believe we might end up. It is also a call on you to join me in correcting the errors of our past and present by building a new road to the future.
The end of a road we are experiencing now is the reign of fascism and socialism of the elite. It was fueled by a nation so scared of foreign monsters destroying our way of life that we wanted someone strong enough to stand up against it and secure us from real or possible enemies. Unfortunately, this fear, coupled with our own behemoth pride and arrogance, led us to raise up a monster in its place. We did not empower something to guard us against abuse and wrong—we raised up an abuser and committer of wrongs. We released a hand of violence to rain death upon those who could not possibly stand up to the onslaught, let alone bring us the degree of violence and misery we brought them. The world saw what we did in the name of goodness and called it what it was—a beast from the abyss. But we were so blind we could not see the truth.
In our lust to glorify our wondrous Beast, we surrendered our rights and liberties through all manner of legislation from eminent domain to wiretapping/email confiscation to the Patriot
Act. We allowed for the subjugation and imprisonment of the innocent without due process. We supported terror and torture. We gave our powers to the Beast and the Beast used it against us. It gave us the Housing Bubble. It turned a blind eye to credit regulations and oversight while pushing interest rates down, which allowed us to absorb more debt than we ever should or would have taken on. And it punished those who didn’t follow, rewarding them with dismal savings, high inflation, erosion of monetary value, and the inability to afford basic living conditions. Housing prices doubled, tripled, and false wealth was created through equity. Blinded by these riches, we could only see the gleaming splendor. We offered gold and silver to the way of our national god. But there comes a time when every bill is due.
The war wasn’t ending. The foreign nation we set out to rebuild and secure was neither. Our loved ones continued to sacrifice blood and flesh while our failure and arrogance multiplied enemies around us. The housing bubble popped. The horror of September 11 was now surpassed by the horror of the Beast’s response: spend more money. The millions who followed the Beast on its path of false abundance began free-falling to their doom. Financial systems began failing. The Beast shoveled money into the system while throwing down interest rates at unprecedented levels. The value of our money plummeted. We became economically inferior to our neighbors and they began owning us. The price of commodities like oil and food skyrocketed to make up for the deficit of the devalued dollar. The Beast left us staggering to give our bellies food, our cars gas, our banks savings, our bills payment, and to maintain a grip on our homes.
But then the rich and powerful collapsed from following the Beast. National banks, Wall Street, and multitudes of con-men who built up trillions in fraudulent practices began evaporating like mist. The rich and elite who fed the Beast cried out to it to save them, and it listened to them. The Beast sent out checks which it boasted would bring help, but they were written in the citizens’ names, without their consent, to plunge them further into subordination to the power of the Beast and the debt it had created to hang around their necks. The Image of the Beast, McCain, praised his master in his party nomination speech, calling him Savior and Messiah. Then we watched as fraudulent thieves went free with millions of dollars to reward them for their injustice. We watched as the meager funds the Beast had reduced us to were made to serve the rich and powerful through bailouts. Bear, Freddie, Fannie, and virtually the entire Great Wall of our street were confiscated. In a historically unheard of maneuver, the Beast took control of the core of our financial system and left the poor, weak, and struggling on the hook for the risks of the fraudulent elite. The socialism of the rich at the expense of the poor was complete. Justice was perverted in the sight of God.
All this has given rise to a feeling that it would be better to have socialism for the poor than for the rich. As November approaches, we can make a change. Most people have been driven either delusional or mad by the Beast. The rich and elite will sacrifice to the Image, since the Beast is their protector. And despite tyranny and moral/ethical outrages of the Beast, many Republicans will still worship its Image. But it is likely that our current situation will raise up the Obamanation of Desolation. Rather than freeing us from enslavement to the system and its debt, this will draw us further in. Our goods and rights will again be stolen to benefit the health and care of others. Perhaps we can learn from history and build a new road—a road that leads past these two ends to the prosperity of both the poor and rich, the protection of the weak and innocent, to a nation that seeks justice, that listens to the words of Yeshua to turn its enemies from wrath through love, peace, and self-sacrifice instead of violence and slaughter, to a nation that does not steal from one to give to another. This November, forsake the Image and Obamanation. Join me in building a new road.
See Shake The Dust From Your Feet – P2.
In Yeshua’s case, he was taking the concept of Temple and placing it upon himself. This meant, for instance, that divine healing and forgiveness would now come to Israel through him instead of through the Temple and its priesthood. Instead of going to the Temple to be cleansed, Yeshua pronounced people clean. Instead of accepting the blood the covenant in the sacrifice of the Jerusalem temple,[12] Yeshua invited people to the blood of the covenant at his table and in his sacrifice.[13] Of course, there cannot be two temples. If Yeshua is now equating himself with the temple of YHWH, then what of the Jerusalem one? He pronounced divine judgment on it physically when he drove the people out and declared it the habitation of terrorists,[14] symbolically when he cursed it via the method of enacted parable,[15] and prophetically when he said not one stone would not be left upon another.[16] In place of this corrupt and soon-to-be-destroyed Temple would be an incorruptible and indestructible one—himself:
Jesus answered them, Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.
The Jews then said, It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?
But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
John 2:19-21
Jesus said: I will des[troy this] house, and none shall able to build it [again].
Gospel of Thomas, 71
Since the Pax Romana could be threated by a violent uprising against the Temple, but not by someone reinterpreting what it meant to be God’s chosen people, when men were found to bring false charges against Yeshua that might move Herod’s hand, they used Yeshua’s words to paint him in the first manner—like another Judas Maccabeus who wanted to drive foreign occupiers out of the Temple by the edge of his sword:[17]
We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands and in three days I will build another not made with hands.’
Mark 14:58
This man said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to rebuild it in three days.’
Matthew 26:61
In reality, of course, Yeshua meant only that he, a temple even greater than the Jerusalem Temple,[18] would be proven true when the Jerusalem Temple fell without being raised again, whereas he would be raised in three days.
If Temple now had meaning in terms of Yeshua, anyone who participated in Yeshua’s work would be participating in the true Temple service. In this new situation then, following Yeshua meant the same as acts of holiness and separation from defilement. And therefore it was not only acceptable, but appropriate that traditions which symbolized this might be incorporated into Yeshua’s or his disciples’ activity. By sending out his disciples with regulations befitting those going to the Temple Mount, Yeshua was providing them with a powerful reminder that in doing his work, they were doing so by the same Spirit, with the same dedication, and in the same manner as those going to participate in Temple activity. Since shaking the dust from one’s feet was an act of separation from the defiled or unclean, for Yeshua’s disciples to do so whenever they or their message were denied became a powerful polemic. It meant that such people had taken on the status of lepers. They were unclean and unfit for the way of the Holy One. While this may sound like a harsh judgment, its primary purpose was to keep the disciples on task and to foster the holiness and righteousness of God’s kingdom. If the gospel did not result in cleansing people from their defilement in one place, then the disciples should move on to where it might benefit others. We see this same concept in Yeshua’s admonition to protect what is valuable by not handing it over to unreasoning and unclean creatures who will only trample it underfoot.[19]
[12] – The blood of the covenant
comes from Exodus 24:8.
[13] – Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24.
[14] – When Yeshua calls the Temple a den of thieves,
he is not making an ethical judgment of their monetary practices. This refers to violent bands of brigands who would rape, plunder, kill, and destroy. Usually they formed around a leader who combined political and religious overtones with their criminal activity. They hid in the rocky terrain of the wilderness like David in Old Testament times in order to evade capture and death. In modern times, they would be compared with Al-Qaeda or other militants who blow up civilians and then retreat to hidden dens on the edge of the territory.
[15] – The cursing of the fig tree. Mark 11:12-14, 20-22; Matthew 21:18-20. Mark specifically bookends this event around Yeshua’s temple rousing in order to show a link between them. But the fact that this is a Temple judgment is made even more clearly when Yeshua, on his way up to the Temple, explains the cursing of the tree by saying that that very mountain will be removed and cast into the sea (Mark 11:23; Matthew 21:21).
[16] – Luke 21:5-6; Mark 13:1-2; Matthew 24:1-2. One of Yeshua’s first oracles of doom against the Temple occurs in Matthew 7:24-27 and Luke 6:46-49 where he says in parable fashion, the rain fell, and the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it.
[17] – 1st Maccabees 1-4. The story of Judas’ forceful retaking of Jerusalem and the Temple from unclean pagan rulers and rededicating the sanctuary to YHWH is celebrated annually by the festival of Hanukkah.
[18] – Matthew 12:6
[19] – Matthew 7:6
See Shake The Dust From Your Feet – P1.
Turning back to the prerogatives enumerated in the Synoptic Gospels, we see that they align very closely with the specific ordinances required of those who would go up to the Temple Mount. Setting aside possible exceptions introduced in Mark, we see that both instruct against taking staves, donning any kind of shoe, carrying vestments for the storage of money (and probably other items), and wearing an additional outer garment. Both also require the removal of dust from one’s feet. These prohibitions were probably meant to remind people of the sanctity of the Temple and the service they were performing. This was a sacred enterprise. Just as they should not think to disregard the Temple and use it as a shortcut if they are engaged in common activity, so when they are engaged in sacrosanct activity, they should not bring things with them that might pollute their course. For instance, those who carried a staff, which was often used for journeys, might be tempted to do a bit of extra traveling on their way to the Temple and those who carried bags of money might be tempted to engage in commerce. Removing dust from one’s feet symbolized separation from the unclean and removing one’s sandals or shoes symbolized the willingness to be holy.[5]
The significant difference seems to be one of location. The Rabbis state that one is not to spit on the Temple Mount or use it as a shortcut, which is not incorporated into Yeshua’s directives. However, Yeshua’s disciples won’t be on the Temple Mount to spit there or to use as a shortcut. That could explain why those two were left out of Yeshua’s commands (of course, there’s no reason why Yeshua should include all of these Rabbinic ordnances), but we still don’t know why Yeshua would apply the others to his disciples when they are also not specifically journeying to the Temple Mount. They are going out into the world. Perhaps even away from the Temple Mount. I believe the answer can be found in an understanding of Yeshua’s mission and message.
Yeshua was reforming Israel around himself and was therefore redefining what it meant to be the children of YHWH.[6] In doing so, he subverted established and authoritative systems, traditions, and symbols. That does not mean he was doing away with Judaism for something else or critiquing it from the outside, only that he was using Jewish elements in different and (so he believed) divinely authorized ways. One of those elements was the status and concept of Temple. According to ancient tradition, the Temple was already itself a subversion and redefinition of a former concept: Tabernacle. After the tribes of Israel had settled in the land, but before Solomon’s Temple was constructed, the Hebrew scripture seems to indicate that the house of God
may have been established at Shiloh. It probably would have taken another redefinition or subversion of the way of things in order to relocate it to Jerusalem. If some scholars are to be believed, it was thanks to one or more scribes at the time of King Josiah that Deuteronomy or the core of it was discovered
[7] (i.e., purposely written or assembled) in order to legitimate political and/or religious reforms by the nation’s Sovereign (specifically to eliminate the practice in Israel of any religion other than that of YHWH and to centrally localize that religion in the Jerusalem city and temple).[8] Using religious texts or even finding religious texts in order to support legislative or governmental projects is a practice common both to modern and ancient times.[9] Once the Temple along with hope of its restoration had been totally destroyed, the Rabbis further reformed and redefined things so that a Temple was entirely superfluous. The Shekinah now dwelled in them as it once had within the Temple: If ten men sit together and occupy themselves in Torah, the Shekinah rests among them.
[10] Indeed, they argued the divine presence that used to fill the Temple would come into even a single person and defended it with Exodus 20:24: in every place where I record my name, I will come into you.
[11]
See Shake The Dust From Your Feet – P3.
[5] – We are reminded of YHWH’s command to Moses in Exodus 3:5: Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.
[6] – Reforming and redefining Israel
was a very Jewish thing to do. At some point, various Semitic tribes with only a common, distant ancestry came under the same covenant and legislation. Moses is attributed with this major reform. Another great reformer would be the king who took those tribes with their own political sovereignties and united them into a national entity—commonly identified in scripture as David. In Greco-Roman times, we see people like the Essenes, who considered themselves Sons of Light and everyone else either Sons of Darkness or followers of Belial, the Samaritans, who believed themselves to be the true people of God preserving his true commands at Mount Gerizim, and countless others.
[7] – The discovery of the Scroll of Torah
and Josiah’s Reform is found in 2 Kings 22-23.
[8] – See the theory of The Deuteronomistic History. A short book that looks at the ideas and arguments while trying to pave a way forward through the many difficulties is Thomas Romer’s The So-Called Deuteronomistic History. K.L. Noll recently challenged the entire hypothesis in a ground-breaking article in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Deuteronomistic History or Deuteronomic Debate? (A Thought Experiment).
[9] – Many ancient Near Eastern kings claimed to have discovered religious texts in their god’s temple in order to support religious, political, or social actions and reforms that, in reality, were probably not actually inspired by those texts.
[10] – Mishnah, Tractate Aboth 3:6
[11] – בכל המקום אשר אזכיר את שמי אבוא אליך – The Hebrew for you
is singular.
In the Synoptic Gospels, there is a puzzling series of commands given by Yeshua to those disciples he is sending out to proclaim the good news.
Acquire no gold nor silver nor copper for your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff . . . And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave.
Matthew 10:9-10, 14
He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts—but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. . . . And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet.
Mark 6:8-9, 11
And he said to them, Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics. . . . And wherever they do not receive you, when you leave that town, shake off the dust from your feet.
Luke 9:3, 5
Many words have been spilled explicating the reasons, intentions, or purpose of these commands. And not a few have devoted themselves to untangling the confusing and seemingly contradictory nature of what is or isn’t allowed.[1] What virtually every discussion lacks, however, is a comparison of Yeshua’s ordinances with the halacha of ancient Jewish tradition and Oral Law.
He may not enter into the Temple Mount with his staff or his sandal or his wallet, or with the dust upon his feet, nor may he make of it a short by-path; still less may he spit there.
Mishnah, Tractate Berakot 9:5
It has been taught . . . a man must not go up to the hill of the Temple neither with shoes, nor with dust on his feet, nor with money wrapped in a cloth, nor with a girdle[2] on. . . . Nor may a man make use of it as a shortcut, and less still may he spit there.
Palestinian Gemara, Tractate Berakot 9:5 (8)
As it has been taught: ’A man should not enter the Temple Mount either with his staff in his hand, or his shoe on his foot, or with his money tied up in his cloth, or with his money bag slung over his shoulder, and he should not make it a short cut, and spitting [there is forbidden].
Babylonian Gemara, Tractate Berakot 62:b
These are authoritative traditions which prohibited or discouraged certain articles and items from being worn or carried as well as certain actions and activities from taking place when going to the Temple. Even more prohibitions were enjoined as one drew further and further toward the Oracle—from the Outer Court to the Inner Court to the Holy and then Holiest Place. There is no doubt that the number and type of regulations one followed depended on one’s specific inclination and religious affiliation. As we’ve already seen in No Sex In The City, the Essenes (perhaps the strictest of them all), would have disallowed intercourse and defecation for those even going into Jerusalem. Even members of the same sect, such as the Pharisees, might disagree on specifics or take on the ideas of a certain faction against the other (perhaps the school of Hillel against the school of Shammai). It may be the case that the Way sect[3] or certain members therein treated many such regulations according to the principle Yeshua taught that if one was cleansed inwardly, then the outside would be clean and that defilement was an inner matter, not on outer one.[4] Thus, for instance, we have the account preserved only in papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840 in which Yeshua takes his disciples on a tour of the Temple and where a chief priest rebukes him and his disciples for being in the Inner Court without having bathed or washed their feet. Yeshua replies:
Art thou then, being here in the temple, clean?
He [the chief priest] saith unto him, I am clean; for I washed in the pool of David, and having descended by one staircase I ascended by another, and I put on white and clean garments, and then I came and looked upon these holy vessels.
The Saviour answered and said unto him, Woe ye blind, who see not. Thou hast washed in these running waters wherein dogs and swine have been cast night and day, and hast cleansed and wiped the outside skin which also the harlots and flute-girls anoint and wash and wipe and beautify for the lust of men; but within they are full of scorpions and all wickedness. But I and my disciples, who thou sayest have not bathed, have been dipped in the waters of eternal life.
See Shake The Dust From Your Feet – P2.
[1] – For instance, is Yeshua allowing a staff (Mark) or not allowing a staff (Matthew, Luke)? Is he allowing sandals (Mark) or not allowing sandals (Matthew)?
[2] – Most scholars describe this word as a type of outer garment worn over the clothes—perhaps a cloak or tunic.
[3] – By which is meant any Hebrew or Torah-observant follower of Yeshua. See Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22.
[4] – Matthew 23:25-26 and Mark 7:15. See also Luke 11:37-41 where Yeshua dines without washing. Similarly, Titus 1:15 states that to those who are pure, all things are pure.
Let us pray: For the victims of war
Have mercy
For the maimed and the crippled
Have mercy
For the abandoned and the homeless
Have mercy
For the imprisoned and the tortured
Have mercy
For the widowed and the orphaned
Have mercy
For those fleeing in terror
Have mercy
From the arrogance of power
Deliver us
From the poverty of violence
Deliver us
From the tyranny of greed
Deliver us
From the ugliness of racism
Deliver us
From the hysteria of nationalism
Deliver us
From the seduction of wealth
Deliver us
From the blasphemy and madness of war
Deliver us
With the waging of war
We will not comply
With the forces of fear
We will not comply
With the bombing of civilians
We will not comply
With governments that are blind to the sanctity of life
We will not comply
With economic structures that impoverish and dehumanize
We will not comply
With the help of God’s grace
We will struggle for justice
With the compassion of Christ
We will stand for what is true
In the end there are three things that last
Faith, hope, and love; and the greats of these is love
Thanks be to God
By Jim Loney (CPT Reservist), Toronto, Ontario
Wow. What a monumental, historical day! It is moments like this that I am proud to be part of the United States of America! It is moments like this that I suddenly believe everything the founding fathers set out to do can actually be accomplished! First, the State of California stops unjustly oppressing homosexuals and denying their right of union, and now the Supreme Court finally acknowledges and decrees what we have known since the Second Amendment was first established: that all people have a right to bear arms for their defense. As a Libertarian, I had only dreamed that government would accept and abide by such natural, inalienable rights. But to live to see such a dream come true is almost beyond expression! Because I follow Christ, and because violence and deadly force is anathema to the kingdom of God established by Yeshua, I have absolutely no reason to bear a firearm. I would sooner be killed than possibly take the life of another person. However, I rejoice that government has finally, officially agreed with part of the Constitution and I will continue to look for and fight for (nonviolently of course) the day when government is fully accountable to the Constitution and where there is liberty and justice for all.
