LOVE THE SINNER; HATE THE SYSTEM

While Christ showed scandalous grace to sinners, his opposition to the corrupt temple system—to its hypocritical patriarchy and exploitative moralism—was biting and frankly, threatening. His prophecies of the fall of Jerusalem came with tears of grief, but nevertheless, he graphically foretold the catastrophic and inevitable demolition of that house of cards. “It’s all coming down,” he would say. “Every last stone, overturned. The city walls and its temple will burn with unquenchable fire. The Valley of Gehenna will once again smolder with the corpses of those who think they are exempt from judgment.”

Why? What sins would warrant such a collapse? Same as today. God’s grace for the penitent sinner does not extend to the worldly power systems that enslave both victim and perpetrator between its serrated teeth. Corrupt networks are slow to come down, but they must and they will, even when they use a temple or church as its covering infrastructure.

Jeremiah outed the fallacy of crying, “The Temple, the Temple, the Temple” as if it were an impenetrable safe house. “Your temple won’t save you. You’ve repurposed it as a den for thieves!” The system would topple, first to Babylon, then later to Rome. My apocalyptic side says it’s happening again. Right now. 

It’s not as though God strikes down his Temple or his people directly. The wrath involved is intrinsic to the sin—a self-devouring mechanism with a long but finite shelf-life. 

THE CURRENT CRISIS

One commentator on the current crisis of the clergy abuse scandal messaged me his diagnosis of the problem: