“Jesus won’t let me say what you are – but you ARE one! And a total, total one!” (I can imagine Arnold Rimmer on Red Dwarf saying this, based on a similar comment of his.)
One of my toughest obedience issues with Jesus’ teaching is where he tells us in his Sermon on the Mount that whoever calls their neighbor “Rēqa!” (Aramaic for “Empty One”) shall be dragged before [God’s] Supreme Court, and whoever says “You fool!” (literally mōron) shall be liable to the Hell (Gehenna) of fire. (Matthew 5:21-22)
So many times, on the highway, and elsewhere in life, I find myself saying, “Jesus won’t let me say what that person is.” Jesus is not the meek-and-mild, all-tolerant idol that so many today imagine him to be. If I were free to create my own Jesus who always loves me and never contradicts me, I never would have invented this part.
Jesus teaches that put-downs put us in league with the murderer. Even anger or hatred that does not literally kill puts us in the same boat. (The words “without a cause” are not in Matthew’s 2 oldest manuscripts.) And yet, Jesus himself does use the exact word mōron in Matthew 23:17 and 23:19 to address his opponents. Of course, Jesus also says “Judge not,” not because judgment is wrong, but because only he is in the position to know who is a fool or who deserves judgment.
Sometimes I hold my tongue and do not call people what they deserve to be called. I’m not sure that makes me any more virtuous than when I do call them what they are. I can’t see why the thought does not also count, like it does when we restrain ourselves from lustful behavior, but still entertain lustful thoughts. But James the brother of Jesus teaches that restraining the tongue does count as a moral virtue (James 1:26, 3:2).
Notice that Jesus invokes the threat of Gehenna (Hell) on this issue, which leads to the question, “Did the real Jesus really say this, or was this made up by some sanctimonious fussbudget in the early church? Here is where we must decide whether the canonical Gospels in their entirety are our indisputable authority on what the historical Jesus really said and did, and whether our manuscript evidence for the text of the Gospels is reliable enough for our purposes.
Any Jesus that does not make me squirm at points like these is not the real Jesus. Thankfully, Jesus' tough but honest teaching is not the final word. That teaching is meant to lead us to despair of trying to earn our way to God, and to place our faith entirely in what Christ has done on the cross to take away all of our sins. That alone can inspire us to live the radical way that Jesus teaches us to live.
