Jesus about People (Luke 7:31-35)
The people of Jesus’s day were no different from the people today. They were not and we are not prepared for God working in the world in different ways. We are not ready to have our expectations of God shattered. We want to have Him figured out. We want to place Him in a box.
John was an ascetic. The people wanted a more exciting, beautiful and pleasant form of religion. Yet when Jesus showed up eating with sinners and engaging with the crowds, the religious of His day complained that He was too engaged with life. He did not practice enough self-denial.
You see this exact sort of thing today. It also plays out in different dichotomies. Politics, for example. The follower of Jesus does not truly fit in either of the artificial left-right spectrum that everyone wishes to enforce. To the liberal the Christian is too “right-wing,” and yet to the conservative the Christian is too ‘lefty.” Like John and Jesus, it seems the believer is doing well when no camp is completely happy with them.
John was an ascetic. The people wanted a more exciting, beautiful and pleasant form of religion. Yet when Jesus showed up eating with sinners and engaging with the crowds, the religious of His day complained that He was too engaged with life. He did not practice enough self-denial.
You see this exact sort of thing today. It also plays out in different dichotomies. Politics, for example. The follower of Jesus does not truly fit in either of the artificial left-right spectrum that everyone wishes to enforce. To the liberal the Christian is too “right-wing,” and yet to the conservative the Christian is too ‘lefty.” Like John and Jesus, it seems the believer is doing well when no camp is completely happy with them.
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