The Morally Superior Man With Oratorical Skill Meets the Morally Questionable Guy With Low Self-Esteem

In our Free Store conversation on Saturday morning we discussed Jesus' parable in Luke 18, "Two Men Went Up to the Temple to Pray."  The first man that went up was a Pharisee and he stood there by himself praying, "God I thank you that I'm not like the rest of this worthless riff raff around here."  The other guy was a tax collector and he stood at a distance with his head down and prayed, "God I'm a screw up please forgive me."  Yes those are literal translations directly from the original Koine Greek!  Ironically, Jesus said that the morally questionable guy with low self-esteem went back to his house justified rather than the morally superior man with oratorical skill.

At this point I asked the group to follow me on a bit of a detour and asked them, "What is the purpose of a map?"  Sheila said it was designed to give you directions from one place to another.  George said that a map showed miles and distances and roads.  Someone else brought up that maps mark out boundaries between territories and show us the lines that distinguish one geographical place from another.  So basically maps mark off boundaries and give us information that can be helpful as we move from one place to another.

As the conversation progressed we talked a bit about how we all have social and moral maps that help us to distinguish the boundaries that mark out good people from bad people in the world.  We talked about how religions give us maps that teach us to distinguish who is in the good group territory from who is in the bad group territory.  We had a bit of fun when someone said that in growing up his religious map had warned against going to bowling alleys which everyone found amusing.  Cliff couldn't remember much about the map that he got from his church which also made us laugh.

At this point in the discussion we talked about how in Jesus' world the religious map of his group favored the Pharisee over the tax collector.  In the story that he told the Pharisee is clearly a good man that as someone said, "would make a good neighbor."  Someone else suggested that maybe the problem was that he was "too good" which made us laugh.  We also talked about how the morally superior man looked down on and was quick to exclude people that weren't just like himself.  We also wondered what the morally questionable guy had done that he couldn't even lift his head and look anyone in the eye.  Somone said that it is a terrible thing to be excluded and looked down on and to feel ashamed and unworthy.

In conclusion we talked about how maybe the story isn't so much about the two men that went to pray.  Maybe the story is encouraging us to throw out the maps we have been given and draw new maps that include rather than exclude people from our lives.  The kingdom of God will most likely include people that our moral and religious maps have placed outside the boundary lines so we might as well get used to them being in the neighborhood.