Mark 8:29-30
One
of the modern tactics in politics and even in internet marketing is to flood
the media with misinformation. If you get too many bad reviews of your services
on the internet you can hire a firm to flood you site with hundreds of fake
reviews that will bury the bad review. In politics when bad news rises the
subject gets switched to something different, a new crisis, a new initiative, the
opponent’s faults and responsibility. This is called obfuscation. And the
modern world is filled with it.
Obfuscation
is the magician’s art. You get people to focus their attention where you want
them to focus so that you can do your dirt deeds unnoticed. The global warming
scare is just such a scandal. The 1930’s was the hottest decade and
temperatures have been falling ever since. “Scientists” have been revising the
old temperature data to fit their computer models, rather than allowing the
data to speak for itself. Since the data didn’t fit their theory, they got us
to focus on the polar bears.
This
past week I read an article about the volcanic activity under the Antarctic
causing the melting of the huge ice formation. The melting has nothing to do
with global warming caused by greenhouse gases, but by something over which we
have no control, a volcano.
“It’s
Bush’s fault” has been the battle cry over the last six years. No one every
takes responsibility for something that happens under their domain, but the
finger is always pointed toward Bush. Obfuscation.
But
this is nothing new. People have been pointing fingers at other people since
the beginning. It’s the snake, it’s the woman. In Jesus’ day many things were
being said about Jesus. The religious leaders were beginning to spread rumors
about Him. He works with the Devil. He parties too much. He has the wrong kind
of friends. He is an enemy of the state.
It
would be easy to listen to this campaign of misinformation. After the barrage
of news, it might be easy to begin to doubt what you know. If everyone else
feels this way, maybe I am wrong.
As
Jesus has gathered His disciples and asked about public opinion on who He was,
He turns and asks who they think He is. Peter pipes up and places the label “Messiah”
on Him. So what would that mean?
Well,
the Messiah is a two sided figure, religious reformer calling people back to a
life of holiness and dedication, and as a result, a political figure who
establishes a righteous kingdom here on earth. These two sides can’t be separated.
And yet Jesus tells them to keep this reality under wraps. He doesn’t want
people to know His true identity at that time. The people would have pushed for
the political change without the power resulting from the Resurrection. Political
change without Resurrection power leads to yet another corruption of God’s
plan.
Messiah
can’t mean ‘really good teacher’ as some today want us to believe Jesus was. We
aren’t left with the option to think that his disciples got carried away and
corrupted His message after His death. If Messiah simply means a really good
teacher, then why tell disciples to keep it quiet. What harm would it do to let
the world know that Jesus was just another really good teacher, like so many
others. There is no danger in a really good teacher. No one listens to teachers
anymore.