SCRIBES AND PHARISEES

Of all the people who crossed paths with Jesus, the scribes and Pharisees were the ones who gave Him the most trouble. Recently I had one of those "Eureka moments," when something that should have been obvious all the time, wasn't, but now is.The scribes (being about the only ones who knew how to read and write), were the people who did all the record keeping in society. Need a clay tablet of your birth certificate? Go see so and so, the scribe. Need a papyrus contract drawn up...You know who you gotta see! And then, the Pharisees! Want to find loopholes in the Torah? You got it! The Pharisees were masters of the legal loophole, always keeping everybody in line, waving fingers in their faces, ready to pounce on the slightest infraction or the law that somebody else might commit. I don't know about you, but one of my pet peeves is bureaucracy and bureaucrats. They are those people who were driven to go by the book. No deviation (except when they're the ones who need to get around the law) They lived by rules. That's how they came to know all the loopholes. That's why Jesus was so upset by them. Their approach to life was rules, rules, rules. But no compassion, no leniency. (think: woman caught in adultery; not to mention the unanswered question of where the guy was who was caught with her). One of the things about that is what we see in the world today. Modern American legislators (not to mention all those in other places on earth, from the local level right up to the Congress, have the same problem. The law is the law is the law. No mitigating circumstances. The law can't handle grey areas - only black and white, true or false. There are no alternatives. Have you noticed how, in very critical areas of American life, where there is obvious need for reform, correction, going back to the drawing table, getting rid of things that don't work, like, for instance, in the field of education, or, perhaps above all, government, we have so often legislated ourselves out of the possibility of change - because bureaucracy is rigid, written in cement - no deviation. The rules are the rules, and they can't yield to need, or good sense, or any other sensible thing that might lead to real, useful reform. There is too much at stake, too many vested interests in the status quo, and both an inability, and an unwillingness to entertain serious transformation. Change? No. no, You can't do that, it's against the law. Change the law? No. no you can't do that, too much red tape involved, and what would the congressmen and senators do if they couldn't get all those perks? The best we can hope for is talk about the problem, but it's against the law to do anything about it.