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Comment by JetAlone | Hacker News Reader

You can wash your hands if you think it is wise to, but don't make it a matter of spiritual, ritual cleanliness that you place trust in the performance of above God as the pharisees did. As you say, God can make the water a worse poison to you.

Honour your father and mother. Be just to your neighbor. Trust God above man and cultivate a loving relationship with both. The modern day godless neo-pharisees will of course, as always, ask questions and make remarks that are trite, intended to discredit people's faith, or trip heartfelt believers into contradiction. They want to maintain the social order they're scared of having overturned by a just man willing to make a real sacrifice going against its grain in a sorely needed fashion. They don't understand, so be it.

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You can also wash someone's feet if you want to, but don't make it a matter of spiritual, ritual cleanliness as Jesus did.

You can also take a bath if you want to, but don't make it a matter of spiritual, ritual cleanliness as Jesus did.

Also, Christians really need to learn what "pharisee" actually means before throwing the word around the way you do. "Neo-pharisees" would imply that the pharisees were some ancient group that ceased to exist at some point. In reality "pharisee" simple means "rabbi," and the only reason the term fell out of use is that the only recognizably Jewish movement to survive the destruction of the Temple and the Jewish-Roman wars was rabbinic Judaism. Almost any Jews you meet today practice a religion that can be traced directly to the pharisees mentioned in the New Testament. Moreover, the religious movement Jesus led was closer to what the pharisees taught and practiced than it was to any other Jewish movement of that time. One easy example is Jesus' own teaching that a man who has lustful thoughts about a woman has already committed adultery in his own heart; this is the kind of broadening of Jewish law that is common in rabbinic documents like the Talmud (e.g. "yichud," a prohibition on unmarried men and women being alone behind a closed door). Jesus also taught his followers answers to common Rabbinic debates, such as the famous dispute between Hillel and Shammai about when divorce is permitted.

Jesus was not nearly as radical as some Christians think. His movement was very slightly outside the mainstream, and for the most part his focus seems to have been on avoiding blind adherence to tradition. His willingness to accept disciples who were uneducated and even outcasts was unusual, but not that unusual, with the Talmud indicating that Rabbi Akiva was illiterate until he turned 40 and that Rabbi Shimon bar Lakish was the leader of a criminal gang before he began studying to be a rabbi (you may not believe such stories, but remember that the New Testament is no more historically reliable than the Talmud). Paul taught a religion that was much more radical than anything Jesus taught, but somehow I do not think you were referring to Paul when you spoke of "a just man willing to make a real sacrifice."

Every interpretation which focuses on Jesus as a "interesting teacher" ignores half of the things he actually said and demonstrated. Paul wasn't more radical than the man who claimed to be greater than the Temple, one with the Father. Christ claimed that Abraham rejoiced for His day, Moses wrote for Him and the Scriptures pointed to Him.

He saw His own flesh as the bread of life, greater than the manna in the desert.

I am not sure we can easily comprehend how out there this was.

He resurrected people and died for the sins of every human. His teaching wasn't just a list of debates, but it was full of claims and events that you can't honestly compare to other "rabbies"

> Jesus was not nearly as radical as some Christians think

The whole thing about forgiveness, non-retaliation, redemption is very distinctive from usual Judaism though. That's one of the core aspects of Christianity.

Who is that "just man willing to make a real sacrifice going against its grain in a sorely needed fashion" threatening to overturn social order?

Also, hand washing is a matter of cleanliness period. Not spiritual cleanliness, not ritual cleanliness, not karmic cleanliness, not any other kind of something cleanliness. It is simple, ordinary, banal cleanliness.

If you totally ignore the context of a text and read it in a way almost no one ever read it, you can give it any meaning you want

I am not ignoring context at all. The context was:

> The modern day godless neo-pharisees ...... want to maintain the social order they're scared of having overturned by a just man willing to make a real sacrifice .......

Who is this modern day man? JetAlone, who are you talking about? And who are his opponents?

Just to clarify my comment, I was answering your second paragraph: it seemed to ignore to me the context of the original related Bible sections that started the discussion.

And that paragraph of mine was in response to this paragraph by JetAlone:

> You can wash your hands if you think it is wise to, but don't make it a matter of spiritual, ritual cleanliness that you place trust in the performance of above God as the pharisees did. As you say, God can make the water a worse poison to you.

That paragraph is very much refering to the present, not to biblical times. For some reason, contrary to what most Christians belive, JetAlone seems to doubt the usefulness of hand washing, because why bother, God can make the water into poison.

JetAlone, do you believe in a malevolent God?

In a way, I can understand it. If you have ultimate unshakable faith in God: a) You believe God will not let any harm befall you no matter how irresponsible your behaviour. b) You also believe that should harm befall you, it is inevitable, because it is God's will. But is this not called tempting God and against Christian dogma?

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