A Ramble About Pharisees

     In the churches and Bible schools I grew up in and attended before 2000 or so, there was a kind of sympathy for the Pharisees in the Gospels. The belief expressed was that the problem with the Pharisees wasn't their teaching or doctrine, but that they simply didn't recognize the Messiah when He came. They made a mistake, and one which they might be forgiven for after all.
     The Pharisees could be considered the Scriptural literalists of their day. These guys were the ones who doubled down on the Torah and the Prophets. More than this, they were also as much of a political faction as they were a religious "denomination." They supported Hyrcanus II against Aristobulus II, who was supported by the Sadducees, when the previous Judean monarch had died.
     Thing of it was, it was the Pharisees whom Jesus went head to head with most of the time. It was the Pharisees who knew Jesus had been sent by God at the very least, and actively worked to discredit and destroy Him because He contradicted their interpretations of the Torah and the Prophets. It was the Pharisees who, by all appearances in Acts, because of their common belief in the resurrection of the dead, attempted to infiltrate and subvert the Apostolic Church by swaying it to their own Torah centered thinking, and of whom Paul wrote that they had snuck in in order to "spy out" their freedom in Christ. And it was the Pharisees that really did the most damage they could to the Church across the Empire in their zealousness for the literal words of Scripture.
     This is why Paul wrote about the distinction between the written "letter" of the Torah, which the Pharisees were all about, and the spirit of the Torah, its intent which Jesus kept trying to get through their thick skulls; and which they didn't want to hear because it contradicted their interpretations and doctrine.
     There are a great many Scriptural literalists, Sola Scripturalists, and Bible only Christians today. They are all well intentioned. But in their good intentions, like the Pharisees, they miss the Spirit of the written Scriptures in favor of the letter of the written Scriptures. And by so doing, they hurt people and cause harm, the results of which are now frequently splashed across the pages of the News on a regular basis. Rather than being Jesus for people and showing Jesus to people, they force on them rules and regulations for Christians to live by which they themselves frequently can't keep, and shut out the Kingdom of God from those seeking it most. They take the written Gospels and letters which were meant to point the Christian towards submission to and control by the Spirit of Christ, and create a new "Torah" which their adherents are required to follow or face the consequences.
     This is not what Jesus taught. This is not what Paul, John, or Peter taught either. by seeking to adhere rigidly to the letter of the Scriptures, they miss the actual teaching and intent of the Scriptures and end up trying to finish with the flesh what was begun by the Spirit of Christ, and the end result is often worse than the beginning.
     And the worst part about it, is that they become so wrapped up in their Scriptural interpretations, that when they hear the voice of Christ speaking to them, they no longer recognize it because it contradicts their interpretations. And like the Pharisees in the 1st century, they actively seek to discredit and destroy Him, ironically, in His own name.