The third area in which Jesus assaults conventional wisdom is in the area of social and religious recognition, the whole honor/shame system. He refuses to abide by it. He refuses to live up to what is considered honorable and refuses to shame what people consider shameful. (If that is not apparent in your reading of the Gospels, read them again.) This does not gain him many friends. It’s perhaps the thing that most bothers the priests and the elders. In response to his ignoring the debt codes and purity codes, they decided to kill him (see Mark 3:6, 11:18; Matthew 12:14; Luke 19:47; John
...more
