Last week, I wrote about character and the importance of maintaining a lifestyle that is focused on God to both protect yourself from persecution and show the light of Christ to the world. I wrote about what makes up that character, but this week, I want to talk about how that character is formed.
I left you with a saying, “You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you react.” What I mean by that is based on Matthew 15: 10-20, but I’ll start you off with a well-used analogy first.
There’s a story about two brothers, we’ll even say they’re twins for the sake of genetic similarity. These twins grew up under a drunkard of a father who drowned away every moment he should’ve spent teaching his boys how to be men. When they grew up, the first twin became a drunkard and never amounted to anything more than his father did. The second twin grew up and never touched alcohol once in his life. People talked about them frequently. About the first twin, they often said, “Who can blame him? Look at his father.” And about the second twin, they often said, “Who can blame him? Look at his father.”
Neither of those boys had control over how they grew up, but they could control what they did in response to their far from ideal childhood. They both had every chance to succeed at escaping the alcoholism of their father, and they both had every chance to fall into it just like their father. But the key is that the way their lives ended up didn’t come from the things that happened to them outside of their control, but from the things they chose to do because of what happened.
To give you a biblical example, let’s talk about Jonah. I’m sure everyone remembers how Jonah was called to preach in Nineveh but decided to run away because he didn’t want to. The calling was something out of his control; God said, “Go preach in Nineveh.” Jonah’s choice to run away, however, was very much in his control. He had two options: do as God said or run away. The characteristic that we know Jonah by was not determined by his calling but by his answer to that calling. We can determine that he was either incredibly selfish or full of cowardice. Take your pick.
In a similar way, he had another choice when storms appeared to assault the boat he was running away on. He could continue to build a character of selfishness/cowardice by refusing to speak up when they drew lots, or he could speak truth and be cast overboard selflessly to save the crew and the others on the ship. He couldn’t control the storm, but his character was built by the choice that he made when confronted with an event out of his control.
This is what Jesus is speaking about in Matthew 15. My Bible subtitles verses 10-20 as, “Defilement is from Within.” I quite like that because it stands true to what I’ve been saying: your character is defiled by the things within you, what you control.
In this moment, Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees, who had again confronted Him because of His teachings in yet another time of Pharasaical big-headedness. The context provided in the first 9 verses of chapter 15 set up the explanation of defilement Jesus serves to them in 10-20 as he confronts the Pharisees’ hypocritical nature as ones who say they worship God but do not live out their lives in obedience to the Law.
Verses 10-11 say, “Summoning the crowd, He told them, ‘Listen and understand: It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.’”
When you understand the Pharisees and how they get to be Pharisees, you come to understand this a little more. Pharisees were pretty much the top of the intelligence line in the Jewish community. Like Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates were to the classical Greek community, so were the Pharisees to the Jewish. They knew a lot, were incredible thinkers, and were rather intelligent. There’s a decent chance they had all of the Old Testament memorized and studied it deeply and consistently. When it came to religious practices, there was no one’s advice you’d want more than a Pharisee.
But therein lies the problem that Jesus is speaking to. This group of people knew so much about the Old Testament and the practices, morals, and lifestyles taught within it. If there was any group that should be expected to be model believers, it would’ve been those guys. But even though they were fed the Bible constantly, what came out was hardly of God’s Word at all.
Verses 17-20 say, “’Don’t you realize that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is eliminated? But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and this defiles a man. For form the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies. There are the things that defile a man, but eating with unwashed hands does not defile a man.’”
Okay, so if you’re catching on, you’re likely thinking that Jesus was actually talking about literal food, and He was. Make no mistake that Jesus was directly confronting the Pharisees on their beliefs about unclean foods and ritualistic handwashing practices. But in verse 15, Peter indicates that he believes this is a parable, and it’s important to note that Jesus does not say it isn’t.
Verse 19 would seem incredibly out of place if Jesus was only talking about pears and chicken, but He’s not. He’s also talking about character, as He often did when the Pharisees reared their heads. If you’ll refer back to what I said about the Pharisees earlier, you’ll remember that I mentioned their incredible education in the Old Testament—that’s the food they ate in this parable.
Now, let’s do some rewording of verse 11 to show you how this really becomes a parable: It’s not the things you learn that determine your character, it’s the things that come from what you learn that determine your character. Like I said before, ideally, the Pharisees should’ve been the ideal believer, but they weren’t. They were full of hypocrisy, anger, pride, and entitlement. What they learned from the Bible was not that they were people in need of God, but that, by following enough laws, they could effectively become like God as rulers of people. They were wrong, of course, but that’s what they learned, and it was that which became their character.
In other words, what made the Pharisees the Pharisees wasn’t the spiritual nourishment they received, but what they did with the knowledge they held. And that goes for everyone. You can’t control what happens to you in this life, but who you are is determined by what you do because of, or in spite of, the things that occur. People can’t see everything you’ve eaten, but they can see the effects the food has on your body. In the same way, people can’t see everything that has happened to you, but they can see how you’ve let it affect you.