This is why we choose friends that think like us, share our values, and respect our boundaries. It’s why we go to the churches that we do. We want to be affirmed and confirmed in our correct and biblical viewpoints, as well as in biases and blind spots. We have our comfort zones, after all, and feel entitled to them.

Jesus will have none of it. He is interfering, intrusive, meddling, prying, and nosey. He is a continual threat to our categories and world view. Just when we think we’ve got our theology and Christian life all figured out and nailed down, we hear a sermon or read a passage that raises a question.

Of course, we can shoot the messenger if it’s a sermon or book, but when the book happens to be the Bible . . . well, maybe we gloss over it or mark as something to be studied and considered later. Later, as in “when I get to heaven I’m going to ask God about that.”

When we are confronted with such information, we can do one of two things with it: we can assimilate it or we can accommodate it. To assimilate new facts or ideas means to fit them into our pre-existing categories; we like to assimilate because we don’t have to change. Or we don’t have to change in a direction that we don’t want to go. Assimilation is our friend.

Accommodation, however, means we have to create new categories or abandon old ones that don’t fit any longer. Accommodation is being transformed by the renewing of our mind, conformed to the image of Christ. Accommodation is sanctification.

Some day, read one or all of the gospels through the eyes of a Pharisee, Sadducee, or any other of the many opponents Jesus accumulated during His ministry in Judea. You’ll find a troublemaker, an iconoclast, and – above all – serious threat to the lives of the comfortable. You’ll be disturbed. That’s Jesus: disturbing the comfortable, comforting the disturbed.

Next: Jesus the Holy Irritation, Part One

Most of all, the “haves” of the day enjoyed a pretty comfortable and prestigious lifestyle. While the zealots, remnant, and other “have-nots” may have been looking for a Deliverer, the in-crowd had other things on their collective minds. “If we let Him go on like this,” whined the chief priests and Pharisees, “all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

No room for accommodation in their minds. Maintain the status quo. Crush or crucify anything or Anybody that poses a threat.

Jesus knew what they were like, of course, but that didn’t deter Him from confronting them. He wasn’t about to pander to the elite, powerful, or “righteous.” So He said things that threatened them and angered them. He did it deliberately and frequently because the truth and holiness were more important to Him than His own safety or comfort.

Here’s an apple cart that Jesus discovered and upset:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.’
“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
“For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
“If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
“Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” – Mt 5.43-48

To be “perfect” does not mean to be sinless or without any imperfection (although this is certainly true of God). One lexicon defines perfection as “consummate human integrity and virtue; full grown, adult, of full age, mature.” This is the standard of behavior Jesus establishes.

The Jews in general, and the powers-that-were in particular, hated the Romans and hated the Samaritans. They liked hating them: it helped them feel self-righteous and superior. Besides, we all need identifiable enemies to help define who were are and who we are not. Even Jesus allowed that: “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.” – Lk 6.26. Jesus wasn’t denying the responsibility to be discerning; Jesus was talking about how we treat our enemies.

He told a story to clarify both who our neighbor is: our neighbor is our enemy. At the same time, He described how we ought to treat our neighbor/enemy.

This was not popular with the self-righteous, comfortable Jews. It threatened their theology and their lifestyle; it intruded upon their religious categories and comfort zones. It was irritating and disruptive. They resisted it and, in the end, killed the Source of the menace.

Next: Jesus the Holy Irritation, Part Two

We deplore the activities of abortionists and their killing mills, where millions of emerging image-bearers have been scraped into eternity like unwanted barnacles or vacuumed out as though they were nothing more than dust that’s collected around the baseboards of our homes. The disregard for human life is mind-numbing and intolerable at the same time.

We detest those who promote same-sex relationships and marriages, seeking to normalize that which God calls an abomination. We rightly find their philosophy abhorrent and seek to protect our children and the children of others from being blindly drawn into a disturbing and sinful lifestyle.

We are angry with those who would seek to limit our freedom of religious expression even as they give carte blanche to every other form of so-called spirituality. The foundations of our culture are not only being rejected but are being restricted. If these groups are allowed to succeed, they will eliminate all vestiges of our faith.

Hated, too, are the evolutionists, journalists, psychologists, and every other “-ist” that seeks to marginalize Christianity and the basic tenets of our faith. We are engaged in spiritual warfare – this we know – and sometimes recall that we are battling forces unseen. Generally our assessment of the threat such individuals and groups pose are accurate and biblical.

But that is not the point. The point is this: How do we talk about them and treat them? How often do we pray for them?

Jesus said we should pray for them. That we should treat them even as the Samaritan treated the Jew he found lying on the side of the road. That we should count ourselves blessed when we are mistreated, misunderstood, and misrepresented by the enemies of God. And that our reaction should be humble, not angry or defensive or vindictive. Conciliatory, not condemning.

Our responses to those who threaten us and endanger those things that are dear to us should be miraculously different from how they react to us. We are not to speak disparagingly of them, or malign them, or cast aspersions on their character and motives. We are to pray for them and to treat them with dignity. We are to value them because they are slaves to spiritual forces of which they are completely unaware. They are blind and dead in their sins.

If the unbelieving people in the world are going to seriously consider our claims, they will have to first observe some seriously different behavior than what they anticipate. We are called to bless them and to be a blessing to them. We are to love them and do good to them.

In short, we are to show them the same sort of compassion, long-suffering (which implies patience in the face of contemptuous behavior), love, grace, and mercy that Jesus Christ had toward us when we were ungodly and opposed to Him. The very same love He has for us now as a group of people who know better, but often fail to behave as we should.

Non-Christians are only doing what they are moved and ordered to do by their master; they are doing the best they can do. We are called to no less: to do that which our Master desires and commands, and to do so as best we can in the power of the Holy Spirit.