When Jesus pulls out the whip

Recently a reader left a comment telling me that I was too negative about the future. He/she said that we should promote optimism, and keep hope to change things, following the example of Jesus. To this I replied:

Jesus quite famously did not stop much of anything. That is why the Jews rejected him as their king and had him killed. They wanted their Messiah to be an emperor and liberator who stopped the oppression of the Romans.

If you have faith in God, you must have faith that all things are converging on His plans. Is it “negative” for Jesus to be nailed to the cross for our sins? Is it negative that the Jews doomed their own city to be razed to the ground by the Romans and scattered around the world? Is it negative that Satan was given command over the kingdoms of the earth?

Negativity is not in the vocabulary of a Christian. There is only reality, and triumphant and supreme God in control of it, wielding all good and evil for His own divine purpose.

But as a counterpoint, DJ brought up the example of Jesus whipping the money-changers in the temple. Here was a clear example of Jesus taking action, not just accepting the fallen nature of things or passively preaching about it. He asks, “So how do you reconcile this with the things Jesus did not [tolerate], like the cord of whips incident? Are there degrees to the injustices we should stop?”

This is worth examining.

Several assumptions are baked into the logic of the question:

1. First, it assumes that “injustice” was the motivating principle;

2. Secondly, it assumes that Jesus acted as an example for others to follow;

3. Thirdly, it assumes that Jesus was reacting to a situation in an organic or spontaneous way, as if he would have done similarly in any number of circumstances if they had risen to the same level of offense;

4. Fourthly, it assumes that the goal of Jesus was to put a decisive end to temple corruption and money-changing there.

These assumptions fall apart under inspection. The lesson is not that we must sometimes draw a line and fight for what is right, but something more difficult to pinpoint. I’ll try to figure out what it is.

My first reaction is to acknowledge how remarkable the incident is. We have no other instance of Jesus lashing out (literally) at anyone, which is itself important to recognize. Jesus did not generally try to change the way things worked, especially by violence, interference, or confrontation. And even within this particular incident, we cannot overlook the strangeness of how it is discussed.

When Jesus had finished driving out the animals and money-changers, and overthrowing their tables, he said (Matthew 21:13), “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” And in another account, he says (John 2:16), “Take these things away, do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered the writing, “The zeal of your house has eaten me up,” recognizing that this was a prophetic fulfillment. When the Jews ask him what sign he was showing by doing this, his answer is, paradoxically, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

Not quite as simple as taking a moral stance, is it?

It’s safe to say Jesus did genuinely take offense at the corruption of the temple, and took direct steps to disrupting it. But when he is directly asked about the reason why he did it, he instead abandons the value of the temple altogether. It has become obsolete. He has come to personally replace it, and what it represents in Jewish society. So what is the point of purging it of idolatry now?

We also have to wonder, did Jesus truly attempt to stop the temple from being desecrated by terrorizing the people and making a mess of their transactions? He told them to remove their commerce from the temple, but do his actions represent a serious plan to eliminate the problem at its source? Was there anything permanent about his actions? Jesus, acting on behalf of God, could have immolated the corrupt priests who tolerated it, or sent a disease to blind the perpetrators, or transformed the money into scorpions. In terms of divine wrath, this is a minor response. And in that sense, I get it: it is something we could imitate ourselves. We could protest, disrupt, and call out corruption ourselves, wherever we find it. But Jesus did not enforce a new policy, call for reform, or in any way seek to create a lasting change in the direction of the temple’s usage. The next day, or at least the next year, the people could carry on unbothered. Is the lesson that we are supposed to make a scene, warn people, and walk away? And if so, why don’t we have records of Jesus and the disciples doing it more often? Lord knows there were plenty of opportunities.

Within the gospels, this is an isolated incident in service of prophecy, which was not extrapolated to apply to the lives of Jesus and the disciples. Why, then, should it be even further extrapolated, all the way into our own daily lives?

Without there being any establishment of a pattern to follow—the other examples all point in the opposite direction, along with many teachings—more importance must be placed on the context of the situation and the answer of Jesus to those who wanted to understand his actions. He told them to destroy the temple. Let us consider whether this might be the greater lesson: even those supposedly sacred traditions and hallowed places, which are always being desecrated by hypocrites, are not really worth protecting anymore. Although we can be provoked into lashing out against the corruption, we must realize that God is going to uproot the whole institution. God is not content with reform. He needs reinvention.

Jesus did not come to teach people how to live better, or how to improve their society. He was not a reformer. He could sooner be called a murderer, a slaver, and an existential dividing line—indeed, because all those who follow him must die at his convicting, become enslaved in his service, and cross over into a new world. He did not ask permission from those whom he chose. He did not come to save the institutions. His goal was never to fix the temple of the Jews. He was the beginning point of the only thing that has ever mattered in the Universe: the firstfruit of that which will endure eternally.

The temple is you and I, before we are saved. Purging is not enough. We must be born again, by a new spirit. Temples need to be destroyed.

Only the destroyed temple can become incorruptible.

Only the dead man can be born of the spirit.

Did Jesus really purge the temple in order to preserve its sanctity? Or did he cause a scene in front of many people, provoking them, in order to get their attention during the mass gathering from around the world of Jews during the Passover, so that he could inform them in no uncertain terms that they were all hustling and bustling and spending their money on something that had completely lost its value?

Far from a moral backlash in service of upholding the tradition, Jesus performed a publicity stunt at a critical moment in the Jewish calendar, showing an act of courage and righteousness to multitudes who were from distant regions, and fulfilled a prophecy—but only in order to establish himself as the Messiah, the one who would redeem them. However, to their surprise, he would do so at the very cost of their traditions.

Christianity is iconoclastic by nature. It is about tearing down idols. It is about razing to the ground the supposedly sacred institutions that prevent people from reaching God. It is about demanding simplicity, stripping pretense, and leveling the field. There are still temples to destroy today, and money-changers within them. The mega-churches, the televangelists, the Christian merchandise stores, the Catholic Church above all.

(2 Corinthians 10:3-5) For though we live as human beings, we do not wage war according to human standards, for the weapons of our warfare are not physical weapons, but are made powerful by God for tearing down strongholds. We tear down arguments and every arrogant obstacle that is raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to make it obey Christ.

We must not only confront the religious hypocrites of this world, but wage war against them and destroy their temples. Not with a whip, but by a much more powerful siege engine of unrelenting criticism, using the Word of God.

Jesus did create an example for us to follow, but it was not to get a whip. It was to catch the attention of the world and warn them to forsake that which is godforsaken.

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