Pharisaical Eyes

In the narrative in John 5 we find a story which our Lord heals a paralytic who had been lying by the pool of Bethesda, and there is a detail there that I had missed in all the decades I had been reading that story.  It is this: our Lord healed the man with a word, telling him to take up the pallet on which he had been lying and walk home.  The man did so. It was, St. John informs us, a Sabbath when this miracle occurred.  As he was walking home carrying his pallet, some Jews saw him and rebuked him for doing this, saying “It is the Sabbath and it is not allowed for you to carry your pallet.”  The man replied that “He who made me well was the one who said to me ‘Take up your pallet and walk’”.  The Jews responded with a question: “Who is the man who said to you ‘Take up your pallet and walk?’”  Eventually of course all discovered that it was Jesus who had said that.

       But note: the Jews did not ask the obvious question, “Who is the man who made you well?” but rather, “Who is the man who said to you ‘Take up your pallet and walk?’”  That was the detail that I missed: they focused not on the obvious miracle but on what they regarded as more obvious—that is, the sin of carrying a pallet on the Sabbath.  When they looked at the wonderful miracle they did not see the glory of God bringing healing, joy, and restored life to the cripple but only the (supposed) sin of breaking the Sabbath.  That was because they saw the miracle (as they saw all things) with Pharisaical eyes.

       Those eyes still exist in many Christian heads today which doubtless is why the Gospels are full of denunciations of the Pharisees.  The Pharisees were not simply a sect of Judaism in our Lord’s day but an abiding temptation in all days.  Every religion has its Pharisees, people who focus obsessively on rules, regulations, and minutiae with the zeal of a persecutor. 

For them, the essence of religious faith consists of conformity to rules so that the relaxation or breaking of the rules must be immediately identified and punished if the religion is to survive in its purity.  Every Pharisee functions as a policeman, a guardian of the gates, a defender of the faith whose vigilance saves the local community from laxity and contamination.

In Orthodoxy such guardians stand on guard with a rule book under their arm, whether the volume be the Typicon or the canons of the ecumenical councils or the (decontextualized and weaponized) words of the Fathers.  They scrutinize liturgical services for supposed innovation, they scan Facebook posts for dangerous words (the word “atonement” apparently betrays a hidden Roman Catholicism), they inquire at the Chalice about the frequency of confession. The enforcement of rules—any rule—is their main task for in their heart they believe that man was made for the rules and not the rules for man (compare Mark 2:27).  The enforcement of a rule, whether relating to the reception of the Eucharist or such comparative irrelevancies as dress code, brings joy for they believe that it brings divine approval and reward. 

The Last Day will reveal that it is not so.  The Church has many customs, rules, guidelines, precedents, and counsels, all of which are intended to help the faithful in their journey into the Kingdom.  They are all good.  But none of those things are laws. The point is not to be lawless, but rather to be wise and discerning.

Take the fasting guidelines for example.  Everyone knows the formula: “no meat, no fish, no dairy during the fast”.  But the guidelines are not laws.  The Jewish dietary restrictions were laws:  under no circumstances whatever could a Jew eat pork for example.  But the prohibition of consuming dairy on a fast is not a law such as that. There may be circumstances when dairy might and should be consumed.

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom once mentioned one such circumstance. In a Q & A panel he once shared the following story: “I remember one year when I fasted according to the rules. I was then a doctor and I had such a ringing in my ears from fasting that I could not hear either the lungs or hearts of my patients. I went to another priest, explained, and asked for a blessing to drink some milk.  He said: ‘The Church has decreed that, during fasting, milk is forbidden. Therefore I cannot give you permission.  If you drink milk, then you will have to answer for it at the Last Judgement. That is all!’ I decided, so be it: I shall be responsible for it at the Last Judgement and those patients whom I will save from tuberculosis or a heart attack can stand up and say: ‘Lord, forgive him. I would have died if he had carried on fasting according to the rules.’”

Here we see that the fasting rules are guidelines, not laws.  Indeed, pretty much all such disciplinary rules are guidelines, not laws.

This is important for new converts coming into the Church to remember.  They often come from places where there are no rules or guidelines whatsoever, places where “every man does what is right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).  They have seen how harmful this can be and they hunger for direction, for discipline, for laws and for consequences if you break the laws.  They are suspicious of any grey and long clearcut alternatives; they easily reduce everything to black and white.  Interpreting a rule as a guideline for them smacks of laxity and laziness.  They want their lives to be governed by inflexible laws.  If the fasting rule says, “No milk for you!” then that becomes the last word.  If you drink milk, then you will have to answer for it at the Last Judgement. That is all.

But in fact Orthodoxy is not and never has been about laws but about life and the path that leads to it.  Taboos are foreign to its spirit.  We remember the teaching of Christ who said that it is not what comes into a man’s mouth that defiles (e.g. milk on a fast day) but what comes out of a man’s mouth—things like envy, pride, slander, deceit, for these come from the heart, the place where sin can make its home (Mark 7:1f).

One problem with reconfiguring Orthodoxy as a religion of rules is that it sets you up to be a judge of others who do not keep all the rules.  You then see the world through Pharisaical eyes, scanning every room for transgression.  When Pharisaism has one firmly in its grip it delights to multiply rules and to find transgression: is that a cheese sandwich in your Lenten hands?  Is that a cigarette in your mouth after Liturgy?  Exactly how many bows did you make before venerating that icon?  Are you properly dressed for church?  Are those bare arms? 

To all these questions, St. Paul has an answer. Or rather, another question: “Who are you to judge the servant of Another? To his own Master he stands or falls and stand he will, for the Lord is able to make him stand (Roman 14:4).     

Obviously there are some things that should never be done no matter what. They are called “sins”.  But disciplinary practices and variable liturgical customs are not among them.  The Church is a hospital and its patients are sick and recovering from a great variety of weaknesses and illnesses.  That is why there are a great variety of practices and customs in the Church and why its disciplinary rules are never laws. 

Someone with Pharisaical eyes cannot see the mote that is in another’s eye, much less the log that is in their own.  Our Lord referred to those having such eyes as “blind guides” (Matthew 7:3-5, 15:14).  The Lenten seasons are good times for self-examination and for checking to see if we have any logs in our eyes.  Whatever motes may be in the eyes of others may be safely left with God.