The Issue of Arguing

"Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews." (John 4:20-22)

Again, I am seeing the unusual way that Jesus treats someone who is used to relating to religion primarily with arguments. Religion is full of people that believe that truth must be advanced through the use of arguing and even force when necessary. But man's ways are not God's ways and Jesus demonstrated here the best way.

One thing that is becoming clear to me in this story is Jesus' consistent way of seeking common connections before dealing with differences. He is not ducking the tough issues, but because His primary strategy is to form heart bonds before addressing external or doctrinal differences, He uses affirmations and highlights the positive things before moving on to explain the more delicate misunderstandings. When the woman reacts emotionally after the subject of her marriage status is brought up and denies that she is married at all, instead of laying a guilt trip on her Jesus twice affirms her honesty in the way she chose to answer. That is shocking to many of us.

Now she brings up yet another point of deep division between her people the Samaritans and His people the Jews. She refers to the core issues that have caused deep hostilities between the two groups for centuries with deep curiosity as to how He is going to respond to this most provocative subject. Instead of continuing a discussion about her private life that has caused her the most emotional pain, she wants to see how He is going to handle the most intransigent deadlock in religion that has stymied resolution for the greatest theologians of the time. In her mind, if this man is really as connected with God as she is beginning to think He might be, then maybe, just maybe, He will be able to provide insights and answers that seem beyond the ability of all the religious leaders to discover.

But the way that she broaches this subject is through the typical way that most people would approach it – through the angle of argument. If this question were to be posed to anyone else from either side of the deep divide that it had created, she already knew what their reaction would be. They would immediately launch into the stock answers and intense defense of their position based on which side they happened to be born on. It seemed that this prejudice was unsolvable and the differences impossible to heal. But this man seemed different and she was keen to find out if just maybe He might unveil the most elusive answers that had never been found by anyone else.

Her hunch was actually very accurate. This man was indeed very close to God – and much closer than she had ever imagined up to this point in their encounter. He was not only very close to God but was in reality God in human form. She was experiencing the privilege of not only being able to talk with someone who might be able to hear insights from God to pass them on to others but was given the privilege of talking directly to God herself without even realizing it yet. In effect, she was being given the opportunity of becoming a prophet herself without even realizing it.

One of the evidences that this was God and not just a human religious man well-versed in Scripture was the way in which He handled such questions. Instead of reacting defensively to a confrontation inviting an argument, He instead keeps moving inexorably closer to capturing her affections, her devotion, her appreciation of His kindness and love for her. In every detail of His demeanor and every word of His interactions with her He was expressing the passionate love that God had for her that she had craved for all of her life. She was already tasting the living water and it was already having its effect inside of her even before she realized what was going on. Because she was willing to receive that water of life and was yielding to its influence in her spirit she was already beginning to tingle with the excitement and joy and this water always produces in any heart that is willing to drink of it.

In Jesus' response to her query about the deep religious tensions between His race and her people, He once again avoided talking first about the tensions that divided them. Instead He went straight to the resolution of this very problem that He Himself had come to this world to provide; He had come to bring the two groups along with all humanity into full unity in Himself, both Jews and Gentiles of every stripe. The Jews had made the reputation of God stink in the world with their exclusivity, their arrogance and pride and their perversions of the true meaning of the Word of God. They had become so self-centered and exclusive in their opinions about religion that they had almost totally obscured the light of truth about how God feels towards sinners. But Jesus came to explode all those myths and to reveal to the world the real truth about God's desires and plans to save everyone who would believe.

But the fact still remained that God had indeed originally chosen the Jews as His special people to reveal His character to the rest of the world. It was true that they had largely failed in this assignment and were soon to finalize their divorce from Him as a nation by killing His Son and then rejecting and killing His messengers that would come after Him. But it was still a valid truth that the Jews were indeed the repositories of the facts of truth; they were the race from which most of the prophets of God came from and they were the ones entrusted with the written messages of God down through the ages. They had been given the most accurate truth even though they had failed repeatedly to live their lives in harmony with it but had allowed their spirit to take on the opposite characteristics from that which inspired these sacred writings in the first place.

On the other hand, the Samaritans were in fact counterfeits of the religion of the Jews. Their motive for building a temple elsewhere from the one in Jerusalem was because they had been so offended by the harsh way in which they were treated by the pure-blooded Jews in Ezra's day. This offense had hardened into a parallel religion invented by the Samaritans as an alternative to that of the Jews partly because the Jews refused to accept them in the way God had intended and partly because the Samaritans themselves had hardened their hearts in defensiveness to justify their own religious preferences. There was certainly plenty of blame to around, but as Jesus pointed out to this woman, the real truth of God really was entrusted to the Jews no matter how badly they had mangled it.

But before making that point, Jesus wanted to let this woman know that all of that was about to become irrelevant as far as God was concerned. Jesus had come to dissolve all the walls of artificial separation that religions had constructed over the centuries and was here on earth to offer a completely new way of connecting with God. He had come to bring to light the very salvation that all of those symbols and shadows built into the Old Testament religious services pointed forward to. When the reality was fully exposed the symbols would become totally obsolete and everyone would then come to God directly without any reference to race, gender or any other discriminations. This was the exciting announement that Jesus gave to this woman before He said anything about who was technically right and wrong in the long-standing feud between the Jews and the Samaritans.

I am still open to hearing what God has to share with me about what Jesus meant in His words about worshiping what we know or don't know. I want to get beyond the stock answers for this and really hear from the Spirit the deeper significance of these words and how they surely affect all of us today.