NOTES for Mar 3:13-35
13 And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him. |
14 And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, |
15 And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils: |
16 And Simon he surnamed Peter; |
17 And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder: |
18 And Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Canaanite, |
19 And Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him: and they went into an house. |
20 And the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. |
21 And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself. |
22 And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils. |
23 And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? |
24 And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. |
25 And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. |
26 And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end. |
27 No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house. |
28 Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: |
29 But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation: |
30 Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit. |
31 There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him. |
32 And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. |
33 And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren? |
34 And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! |
35 For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother. |
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The human mind is resourceful; this has been known long and well. So has the fact that it is the greatest flatterer in the world: if a person very much wants to convince himself of something, prove something to himself, or justify something for himself, his mind is glad to try and please him. It will find the needed arguments and offer such interpretations of perfectly obvious facts that, if the person wants, they will allow him to see those facts as completely different from what they really are. This activity of the human mind turns out to be especially "useful" when certain facts simply refuse to fit within the framework of a scheme, concept, or theory devised by the same human mind.
Something like this happened when certain "scribes" (apparently learned rabbis or teachers of Torah from the Jerusalem academy) began to claim that Jesus supposedly cast out dark spirits by using the power of their own head, the ruler of the world of shadows and the kingdom of death, one of whose names was Beelzebul. The absurdity of such a claim was obvious, and Jesus immediately pointed it out to the scribes: if everything were as they claimed, that would be a tremendous stroke of good fortune, because it would mean that a split had occurred in the kingdom of darkness, so that fighting it would now be quite easy. It was obvious to everyone that nothing of the sort was to be expected.
The scribes simply proposed a theory that could explain what was happening without destroying their own concepts, above all their messianic concepts, and some others as well. This Man, they said, violates the Law given by God (in reality, the prescriptions invented by people and proposed as an interpretation of that very Law given by God); therefore He cannot be a man of God; therefore He cannot heal; and since He nevertheless heals, then... at this point the new theory came in handy: therefore, He heals by the wrong power, not by God's power. The logic is preserved, but it has no relation to reality.
Yet a person who wants to deceive himself tries not to notice this, and truly does not notice it, while the mind helps him remain in ignorance. A person's life is determined not by mind and not by logic, but by will, which compels a person to choose and decide. This includes choosing what he wants to see and what he does not want to see. And seeing what one wants or failing to notice what one does not want is not so hard; when needed, both mind and feelings will help with this. They cannot resist the will, which determines who and what a person will be before God and people.
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