NOTES for Mat 23:13-39

“Religion is an ecological niche”; “religion is a social game.” This is precisely what many thoughtful and serious people say about religion. A game... This is what Jesus calls the Pharisees, pious people who know and fulfill every religious prescription and live by this and nothing else: “Actors!” It is not that He condemns actors in general, but these people are playing at something that cannot be treated as a game. However much our life may resemble a theater, God cannot be the content of a performance. That is why such a social game is unacceptable to Jesus: God is too important and too close to Him for such playacting—praying first for show and then deceiving and humiliating others; preaching and then forgetting God; being honest before God in calculating the tithe on vegetables and then deceiving Him with one’s whole life. Perhaps we have this need to portray someone, to present ourselves as someone... But the heavenly Father does not play at “mothers and daughters”—His love is real.