Mark 10:35
Has
anyone ever told you upfront that you had to grant them their request? In
reality they weren’t requesting at all. They were demanding. They were
pretending to give you the option of granting or refusing, but in reality they
were simply trying to get their way. Not the best diplomatic move.
We
see this done in a passive-aggressive way all the time in the media. The
opposition is painted as some evil force. Then it becomes easy to support, and
very painful to oppose those in power. We see this in the debate now framed as “intolerance.”
But as I have said before, in order to label someone intolerant, you must make
a value judgment about their position, and then deem that position as one that
must not be allowed. This is the definition of intolerance. So to label someone
intolerant, the labelers must themselves by definition be intolerant. Thus they
force people to align themselves with their position or be thrown to the wolves
by being labeled “intolerant” and suffer the shaming consequences.
Two
of Jesus’ disciples think they can twist Jesus’ arm. They must not have been
listening to Jesus’ teaching! They must not have been watching His example of
service of others. Somewhere along the line they became their own worst
enemies. Have you ever become your own worst enemy?
I
must wonder what was going through James and John’s minds as they approached
Jesus. I wonder what the discussion had been from which they concluded it would
be a good idea to ask Jesus for top billing with Him. And who decided to
approach Jesus this way? Why had they excluded the other ten from their
discussion?
It
is amazing that when we get by ourselves and begin to let our imaginations run
wild, we can come up with some pretty crazy ideas. When we isolate ourselves,
cut off connection with our peers, ignore the wisdom of the Scriptures, we can
get pretty far afield very rapidly. We usually don’t notice that we are
drifting away, but others usually notice it pretty rapidly. They will often
point it out to us, but we brush it off and ignore them.