Being Offended

July 19, 2021

The Pharisees were among the elitists of 1st century Judea. Like most elitists, they snobbishly criticized common folks who didn’t have the luxury of following every detail of their elitist code. In Matthew 15:1-13, they complained that Jesus’ disciples didn’t observe the ritual hand washing before eating. Mind you, this was not the before meal hand washing common today. It consisted of dipping one’s fingertips into a bowl of water and drying them on a towel—hardly a sanitary measure. Jesus responded by calling them out for hypocrisy; finding ways to avoid clear Scriptural moral commands while insisting that the peons follow every instruction they so freely spewed forth. 

One thing to remember about elitists: they don’t like having their hypocrisy exposed. Matthew tells us that “his disciples came and said to Him, “Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” But He answered and said, “Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch.”” —Matthew 15:12-14 

Did you catch that word? We are hearing it all the time in the media these days: “They were…offended.” They didn’t like that Jesus refused to play their games and bend to their whims, that he would stand up for ordinary people they considered beneath themselves. Being offended is the standard elitist response to those who dare challenge their bigotry and pride, and the narrow rules they would impose on everyone but themselves, by legal force, if necessary. That’s why they conspired to crucify Jesus. The High Priest Caiaphas admitted so when the chief priests and Pharisees worried that if they didn’t do something about him, “everyone will believe in him; and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.” Jesus was upsetting their status quo and they were offended.

Jesus had no problem calling them out for what they are, but at the same time, he refuses to take their bait by getting into useless arguments. “Let them alone; they are the blind leading the blind. Both will fall into a ditch,” he says of them in v. 14. Elitists carries the seeds of their own destruction. It may take longer than we like, but eventually, they devour themselves, as we are seeing today with the cancel culture movement. Unfortunately, they carry a lot of unsuspecting people with them to the ditch into which they fall. “Leave them alone” is good advice.