{"id":7238,"date":"2015-12-30T00:05:04","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T08:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7238"},"modified":"2015-12-29T16:33:38","modified_gmt":"2015-12-30T00:33:38","slug":"scum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/12\/30\/scum\/","title":{"rendered":"Scum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jesus went out to the lakeshore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector\u2019s booth. \u201cFollow me and be my disciple,\u201d Jesus said to him. So Levi got up and followed him.<\/p>\n

\tLater, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this kind among Jesus\u2019 followers.) But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, \u201cWhy does he eat with such scum?\u201d<\/p>\n

\tWhen Jesus heard this, he told them, \u201cHealthy people don\u2019t need a doctor\u2014sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.\u201d (Mark 2:13-17)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tJesus came to do the laundry. Levi, the son of Alphaeus, is sometimes called Matthew. He was a tax collector. Tax collectors were prosperous individuals, who lived well and never lacked for anything. But they were universally denounced. They were the lowest of the low. They were like drug lords living high and mighty off the sale of death. Tax collectors had turned against their own people. They accepted a fortune in exchange for their souls. They had sold out their homeland for money. They were collaborators and traitors. Most religious people wanted to see them dead.<\/p>\n

\tBut Jesus asked such a person to become one of his disciples. And then Jesus attended a party he threw, paid for by his ill-gotten gain. It was a party filled with more tax collectors and the women they kept. The Pharisees were besides themselves with righteous indignation. They wanted to know how Jesus could eat with the lowlifes of society if he really were the Messiah.<\/p>\n

\tAccording to the expectations and understandings of the religious establishment, one of the roles of the Messiah was to cleanse the nation of sinners. Instead, Jesus was partying with them. It made no sense. <\/p>\n

\tThe religious establishment missed the fact that though one could get rid of dirty laundry by burning it, there was a much better way. Just clean it. God preferred to simply clean the dirt that had stained the souls of men, rather than to destroy the men. Mercy is God\u2019s first choice, not his last choice.<\/p>\n

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Jesus went out to the lakeshore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector\u2019s booth. \u201cFollow me and be my disciple,\u201d Jesus said … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7238"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7240,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7238\/revisions\/7240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}