We are all Pharisees

“That stuff Jesus warned us to beware of, the yeast of the Pharisees, is so infectious today in the camps of both liberals and conservatives. Conservatives stand up and thank God that they are not like the homosexuals, the Muslims, the liberals. Liberals stand up and thank God that they are not like the war makers, the yuppies, the conservatives. It is a similar self-righteousness, just with different definitions of evildoing. It can paralyze us in judgment and guilt and rob us of life. Rather than separating ourselves from everyone we consider impure, maybe we are better off just beating our chests and praying that God would be merciful enough to save us from this present ugliness and to make our lives so beautiful that people cannot resist that mercy.”

― Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

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We are all...... (fill in the blank here)

This trope (think literary, rhetorical device) as a nice fill in the blank quality to it.

This of a group, or a person you admire

or a one that has been treated poorly, unjustly

and just add the name into the equation

Kennedy did it way back in 1963

“Ich bin ein Berliner”

More recently people have cried

“We are all Hokies” after the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007)

“We are all Malala”

“We are all Palestinians”

This is good

This identification with the oppressed

The captive,

The hungry

The violated

but sometimes

all too often in fact

we identify mostly

with ourselves

our view

our needs

our theology

our ideology

our righteousness

it is all about us

and never about them

and in those moments

we create a dichotomy

us and them

good and bad

in and out

Children of Grace, Children of Judgement

And we judge

All of us, conservatives and liberals alike

We judge

We are superior, they inferior

and in those moments we can say

we need to say

we need to understand and own

that we are all Pharisees

(in our own way)

and this too is good

#weareallpharisees

for it means we see ourselves honestly,

that we believe in grace

and,

that we are willing

willing to allow God “to save us from this present ugliness

and to make our lives so beautiful that people

cannot resist that mercy.”