“You ignore God’s commandment while holding on to rules created by humans and handed down to you.” Jesus continued, “Clearly, you are experts at rejecting God’s commandment in order to establish these rules.” — Mark 7:8-9
The Achille’s heal of religious people is following unquestioned rules because it makes them look and feel good. “The Bible says so…” is often the justification, though of course the Bible says some things that are contradictory, obsolete, or–in Jesus’ own words–“created by humans and handed down to you.”
Jesus would have been a great psychotherapist if he hadn’t been busy being the Messiah. He had the 20/20 insight of looking behind people’s actions and words and exposing their motives. In the verses above, he’s responding to Pharisees who criticized his disciples for not washing their hands before eating. Instead of simply condemning their pettiness, he helped them see the root cause of that pettiness: their self-perceived righteousness was actually self-righteousness in disguise. Anytime you point out how bad others are because they don’t rise to your standards, that’s being self-righteous.
While Jesus wasn’t a professional therapist, he did give us his therapeutic handbook: Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount. The underlying theme in it is being brutally honest with yourself so you can grow into an authentically honest relationship with God. The more you recognize and confront your own inner defenses, the more God’s grace frees you to live more freely and abundantly.
I’m going to re-read those chapters in Matthew today, from the perspective that the greatest therapist who never had an office is talking directly to me. Maybe that’s something each of us needs to do from time to time, to make sure we’re not fooling ourselves and coming across as people demanding that others wash their hands.