You And Who Else?

“Who do you think you are? What right have you to tell me what to think?”

Has anyone ever said that to you? It’s not very pleasant. But it happened to me, once. Back when I was just starting seminary.

I had run into an acquaintance of mine named Nora. She was pretty vulnerable and sensitive to begin with, and on top of that was going through some pretty rough times. I didn’t know her well; we’d only talked a few times. But I knew her children’s names, and where she went to church, and things like that and we were both in the mood for a coffee break. When we sat down, Nora saw me glance at the book she was carrying, one of Shirley MacLaine’s on reincarnation and channeling and other New Age ideology, and she said something like, “I’ve been doing a lot of reading on spirituality lately.” And I said, “Please be careful, that stuff can be dangerous.”

And she blew up at me.

And of course I hadn’t told Nora what she should think, I had told her what I thought. And I hadn’t told her not to do it, I had told her to be careful. And furthermore, as to who I thought I was, I thought I was a seminary student who knew a whole lot more than she did about these things, and had furthermore been pretty badly burnt playing around with New Age stuff before I became a Christian. So not only did I mean well - which you all know is no guarantee of anything, you know what they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions - but looking back I still think I did the right thing.

It’s politically incorrect, of course, even to hint that you don’t fully agree with someone else’s opinions. Because if all religious stories and values are simply cultural constructs, as our post-modernist society teaches, there is no truth against which anyone’s opinions can be measured.

Tolerance used to mean that everyone has a right to their own opinion - even when they are wrong. It’s what the French satirist Voltaire meant when he said, “I disagree with what you say - but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” And of course it is especially important to be respectful of people’s deeply held convictions, which is the reason for the classic tabu against discussing religion and politics in public. But that’s not what tolerance means any more. Nowadays tolerance means that all opinions are equally valid.

A classroom exercise in values clarification was used for some 20 years with great success in getting kids to think about right and wrong. It’s a story of a village which is visited by a traveler and in the course of his stay a rumor arises that he has violated a local tabu, and the villagers stone him to death. As I said, this used to elicit lively discussion. But the California teacher who was being interviewed in the article said that the children typically respond with, “well, maybe what they did was right in their culture. Who are we to judge?”

The only way you can be absolutely sure that no one will criticize your decisions, or behavior, or morals, or beliefs, is to make criticism itself tabu. And the best way to make criticism tabu is by removing the standard of measurement from public view. Because if there are no standards, there can be no judgment, and we can all go on doing exactly what we want, can’t we.

It’s understandable, of course. Nobody likes to be told not to do what they want to do. Nobody wants to hear that they’re being foolish or unethical or just plain wrong-headed.

And that, of course, is where the Pharisees in this story are at. When they ask Jesus, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” [Mt 21:23] they weren’t really seeking an answer. They were saying, “Who do you think you are? How dare you do these things that call into question our authority, our teaching, our status?” That’s why Jesus didn’t answer them. The teachers of the law had all the information they needed to figure out who Jesus was after all, they knew the Scriptures backwards and forwards - but they were afraid to think too deeply about it, in case they might be wrong.

So Jesus answered them with another question, instead. It was a classic rabbinical teaching technique, designed to make students learn to reason for themselves, as opposed to just spoonfeeding them the answers. Jesus asked them, “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” [Mt 21:25] If they really had been confused, looking for answers, thinking about John the Baptist would have helped them figure out the answer. But the passage shows us that seeking knowledge was not their motive, doesn’t it.