Displaying Anger?
When Jesus descended the Mount of Transfiguration, a man emerged from a crowd at the base with a request that Jesus heal His son. He had taken the boy to the disciples, the man explained, but they had been unable to cure him. Jesus' response, as it comes through in translation, gives the impression of being peeved by the request. "O unbelieving and perverse generation," He replied, "...how long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me" (Matt. 17:17, NIV). At the very least, such words seem uncharacteristic of the One we have come to know as the "gentle Jesus, meek and mild." How might we explain Jesus' tone here? It is a difficult call. The Gospels mention other occasions when Jesus certainly appeared angry, as well.
How do you understand the following passages? (Matt. 21:12, 13; Mark 3:1-5).
Many Christians consider that the way for us to proceed with choices in our complex, contemporary world is to ask: What would Jesus do? It sounds simple enough, until one asks the logical preliminary question: What did Jesus do? Here we discover that the answers are not always as simple as we may think. What, for example, are the implications of the above passages for our own conduct today?
"Presuming that what Jesus would do today has some correlation with what he actually did then—in first-century Roman Palestine . . . —how in the world might a contemporary Christian go about replicating and applying these bizarre incidents of tree-cursing and temple-disrupting? If our favorite grocery store happens not to stock a particular fruit we are craving—because it's out of season!—do we proceed, with Jesus' blessing, to curse the fruit bin, the produce manager, and everything else in sight? And if the preacher goes on too much about money one Sunday or if we are just generally miffed at various church personnel and programs, do we bust in during a worship service and start upending pews, pulpits, altars—anything not nailed down—and bouncing ushers from the premises?"—F. Scott Spencer, What Did Jesus Do?, p. ix.
What principles should we bring to bear upon such questions? Where does spiritual common sense come in? Jesus came as the Messiah, the Savior of humanity. How do we distinguish what He did strictly in that role from that which He intends for us to follow?
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