Competing Passions

To those who were selling the doves He said, "Take these things away; stop making My Father's house a place of business." (John 2:16)

Something in this seems to resonate in my heart today. I don't want to use it as a platform from which to criticize or condemn others, but neither do I want to ignore disturbing relevance that this has for the kind of mindsets that are all too familiar in the way we act and treat each other in the house of God. I want to listen to hear any convictions that the Holy Spirit may want to supply so that I am not found among those who need to be escorted out of the house of the Lord by fear of His presence.

This event in Jesus' life and the one very similar to it just before the end of His earthly ministry is seemingly uncharacteristic of what we usually think of how Jesus acted. The normal explanation for this is to assume that He simply made an exception to His normal way of relating to people in these instances and had an outburst of rage in which He acted out of character. This is very much like the kind of thing we might do if pressed beyond our patience and so we assume that God runs out of patience just like we do. But this kind of logic will always lead to faulty and dangerous conclusions about God. We must be extremely careful not to make assumptions about God's actions and motives based on our own ways of acting and feeling because this can cause us to fall into the trap of forming opinions about God based on our sinful ways of thinking instead of learning the real truth about Him from His viewpoint.

Because of this kind of logic I have seen all sorts of damaging outbursts justified in the name of “righteous indignation” which is what it is typically called. But the spirit that motivates such outbursts of anger and actions often involving force or anger against others is almost always radically different than the spirit that motivated Jesus during these times. It is usually a spirit of self-righteousness and false piety and of taking vengeance into one's own hands instead of a legitimate jealousy for the reputation of God. In fact, it is a similar spirit that tripped up Elijah when he moved outside the will of God for him on Mount Carmel and he consequently soon found himself cowering in fear under the threats of a single pagan woman as a result.

When it comes to outbursts of passion and jealousy for the reputation of God, I believe that it is extremely vital that one first be in perfect harmony with the pure love and compassion of God before they can ever be qualified to exercise the kind of open passion demonstrated by Jesus during this event. When humans attempt to exercise passion on God's behalf, they must first be swallowed up and purified by the holy fire of God's unconditional love and have their hearts filled with an attitude of unconditional forgiveness. Otherwise they will quickly become side-tracked by the contamination of an infection from earthly passions in their sinful nature that will distort the exhibition of God's character during such an event.

As a result of the widespread abuse of passion in the name of God, the very idea of passion itself has come to be considered by many to be inherently evil in some way. And it is true that nearly all of human passion has been tainted by our inherent and pervasive presence of selfishness and pride. That is why it is so dangerous to act out our passion or make decisions based on our passion in the name of God. We may have convinced ourselves that God needs our passionate input in order to defend His reputation or to protect His property, but that kind of thinking is not led by the Spirit of Jesus but rises from the spirit of a counterfeiter. It appears to be very pious and religious, but it does not convey an accurate picture of the Father as He would have us to do. Moses found that out after he allowed his own impatient passion to interpose between God's heart and the pictures of Him being molded in the minds of multitudes of people in the desert who looked to Moses as an example of what God was like.

But all of this does not prevent us from ever being able to experience or express the holy and pure, selfless passion of the Father as Jesus demonstrated. In fact, I am fully convinced that God's greatest desire for us is to become so unified with Him that we can all become safe channels of His immense reservoir of passion that flows from deep in His own heart. We were made for passion and it is wrong to make the assumption that just because passion gets us into trouble so often that it is wrong to live passionately. Instead of trying to avoid passion altogether, we need to allow God to transform us and heal us and rewire our minds and hearts so that the powerful currents of pure and holy passion can once again energize the circuits of our lives and bring glory to Him. When that begins to happen we will find ourselves more like Moses when his face literally glowed with the glory of God because of His close association with the passion and beauty of God.

That was not what I originally intended to think about when I started pondering this text. But having said all that, I realize that I need to have my own heart purified from all selfishness, pride and self-righteousness so that God can use me more effectively and safely to express the pent-up passion needed to clarify the real truth about His character. It is very clear that God's reputation has been maligned and distorted terribly and that He needs people who are willing to be filled with both the truth about Him and with His Spirit which can energize them with the same passion for His reputation that Jesus demonstrated in this encounter in God's house.

What originally caught my attention in this story was a sincere desire to know what it was about the people and activities going on in the temple that elicited such a response from Jesus. I am fully aware of how most people have come to reason this out, but I am highly suspicious of the accuracy of those conclusions given the outcome of their tactics to correct similar problems today. What I too often see is a spirit of sternness and hostility in the church towards anyone who makes too much noise or toward children who move around too much or towards anything that disturbs or challenges our formalism and so-called reverence.

It disturbs my heart to see the antagonism and harshness in the spirit of many Christians towards others who act differently than they think should happen in the house of God. The way this is often dealt with is to employ threats or veiled insinuations about God's anger against anyone who disturbs our version of what should go on in church. There is no shortage of horror stories about force and violence and bigotry being exercised against others who inadvertently offend some “saint” in the church who views themselves as God's appointed watchmen to keep sin out of the church. And this ugliness is usually perpetrated in the name of following the example of Jesus in cleansing the temple. But was this the example and spirit that Jesus engaged in when He did this strange act that day? Or was something very different going on here that we almost always completely miss in this story?

A great deal of discussion and debate is carried out over the details of what Jesus did or did not do during these encounters in the temple. Did He actually hit anyone or did He just threaten them? Did He lose control of Himself in His zeal or was this a calculated fit of rage that He couldn't control until after He cooled down? All sorts of speculations are carried on – but for what purpose? Are we trying to get into the head of Jesus and really understand what motivated Him or are we trying to come up with a formula that we might be able to follow in order to justify our own outbursts or prejudice against others?

I am not very confident that I have a very satisfactory answer to all of these questions yet. I am quite sure that most of the explanations I have heard are far from satisfactory, but having said that I still want to move much closer to understanding the real reasons and motives that filled the mind and heart of Jesus to take such bold moves in the face of such intimidating odds and fierce opposition. And maybe that is leading me to uncover my own true desires. For what Jesus demonstrated on these occasions was a spirit of boldness in its pure and holy form, a demonstration of boldness that is both safe and needed to reveal the real truth about God's heart of passion. This is in contrast to the kind of boldness born of self-righteous, self-justifying religious pride and prejudice.

I remember the prayer of the early Christians when faced by the intimidations of these same Jewish leaders just a few years after this event. When Peter and John were confronted in this same temple for causing a disruption to the status quo by bringing in a leaping, dancing, hollering, former lame man who had just been healed of life-long disability, they returned to their fellow believers and all realized that what they were really facing was a strong pressure to become afraid. Their real problem was not the potential violence that was threatened against them, it was succumbing to the fear itself that was their greatest danger. For it is fear that is the most powerful weapon of the enemy to steal away the boldness and peace that God intends should fill our lives as we live to demonstrate the real truth about Him in a world of deceptions and lies about Him.

As those early believers listened to the account of Peter and John they felt the old stirrings of fear rising up in their hearts attempting to neutralize all the joy and passion and courage that they had so recently received from the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. They were determined not to be sucked back into that prison of fear from which they had only recently escaped and so they all turned to God collectively and cried out to Him for one thing in particular – boldness. In their prayer they started out by focusing on the real truth about God that Satan was attempting to obscure in their minds through fear. Then they reminded themselves of what God had done in the past and of His Word in the Scriptures to get a proper perspective on reality. After setting this context firmly in their minds and hearts they then relayed to Him their current dilemma and asked for one thing only. That one thing was not deliverance from prison or persecution or anything else but freedom from fear itself. In essence they said, “God they're trying to make us afraid again! Give us boldness to speak the real truth about You no matter what happens.”

And the result of that prayer was a fresh infusion of power, boldness and love from the throne of heaven that filled them even more with the Spirit like that seen in Jesus. And this was the very same spirit that Jesus demonstrated in the temple when He chased out all those who were so terribly misrepresenting the truth about God. (Isn't it interesting that this kind of event was never carried out in the temple by any of His disciples in later years.) But it is vital to understand that Jesus was not acting in anger against people as we so often suppose but was angry about the misrepresentations and distortions of what God was like being carried out in the name of God in His house by those claiming to represent God.

Jesus loved those people He chased out of the temple just as much as He loved His own disciples. Until we factor that into the picture we will not be able to comprehend what was really going on here. It was not hatred or anger as we think of it or bitterness or prejudice that motivated Jesus to act as He did but was a desire to restore the Spirit of God into the house of God. And what was the spirit that was missing in the temple that needed to be returned? Well, take a look at the context and the implications.

Carefully consider the words of Jesus during this event. Take these things away; stop making My Father's house a place of business." This idea of business has deep implications that go far beyond just buying and selling merchandise in a physical house of worship. That view has been used to condemn many people for doing all sorts of things in a church building, but that is still not really getting to the root issue. We can easily condemn others for doing what we consider improper activities in a church building while at the very same time demonstrating the very spirit that Jesus was trying to expel from the house of God.

This attitude or mentality of business that had become so prevalent in the temple that Jesus wanted to expel is far more subtle many times than the open demonstrations of it in Jesus' day. It can be seen in the way people treat each other in the church using policy rules or legalistic attitudes to discourage and manipulate those around them. It is seen in the subtle or not so subtle power struggles that go on all the time in the body of Christ. It can be seen in the callousness we often have toward the pain and problems of the weak or the abused among us while over-emphasizing an intellectual religion. It is even described in the book of Revelation quite clearly in chapter 18 that climaxes with a description of the merchandising of men's souls.

The very way that most churches are structured corporately lends itself to a business mentality much more than the family atmosphere that Jesus intended should pervade His house. We like to give much lip service to pretending that we are all living like family, but not far underneath most people know that this is often only a ruse, a pretension to make us more attractive to drawing others under our control. But what we are too often seeking are positions of influence and recognition more than increased opportunities for genuinely and selflessly serving others in love and humility. I am afraid that if Jesus were to show up in our churches today that He would be just as resented and unwelcome as He was in the temple 2000 years ago. We may be using His name and singing His praises with our mouths, but what is the real condition of our hearts?

This is something I want to think about more. I feel impressed that there is much, much more to this story than what I have seen so far. I want to listen to the deeper messages that I sense the Spirit has for me as I allow Him to unpack this passage to me more thoroughly.