WE LIKE TO THINK of ourselves as reasonable, rational people…and sometimes we are. But often, we’re anything but. Piles of research demonstrate the myriad ways our thinking goes astray. Our brains are lazy and biased, prone to making the same predictable mistakes—a fact that marketers and politicians exploit. It takes an effort of humility and will to recognize when we’ve succumbed to such biases, take a breath, slow down, and try again.

For example, have you ever taken an immediate dislike to someone, even though you know almost nothing about them? That first impression can be hard to change because our automatic tendency from that point forward will be to notice only the things about them that reinforce the opinion we already hold. And if that negative opinion is invested with strong emotion, we begin to see and treat the person as our enemy, someone to be avoided or scorned, someone around whom our defenses are always on alert.

At best, we might tolerate them, keeping our contemptuous thoughts to ourselves. At worst, we might go on the attack or be hypersensitive to every perceived slight. Again, unless we make a conscious decision to calm down, open our minds, and entertain the possibility that we have it all wrong, our biased brains will only see what we expect to see, giving us the satisfying feeling of being right and righteous.

Changing that opinion may take an act of God. And unfortunately, not even God always succeeds in getting through the wall of someone’s stubbornly held biases.

Just ask Jesus.

. . .

LUKE 6 BEGINS with two brief stories of Jesus being challenged by Pharisees, directly or indirectly, regarding his observance of the Sabbath. In the first story, the Pharisees confront his disciples for picking and eating grain on the Sabbath, as if they were doing the work of reaping and threshing. Jesus responds by intimating that they don’t know the Scriptures as well as they think they do, then declaring himself to be Lord of the Sabbath; his authority trumps theirs.

One imagines they didn’t take that well.

The drama is heightened in the second story. The scribes and Pharisees are in attendance as Jesus preaches in a synagogue. They’re watching him like a hawk, waiting for him to do something they would consider unlawful. Indeed, it seems they expected he might dare to heal someone on the Sabbath, and were ready to pounce if he did.

But Jesus knows their thoughts. They haven’t said anything, so Jesus is the one who initiates the confrontation. There’s a man in the congregation whose withered hand needs healing. It’s not a life-threatening situation, so in the eyes of the scribes and Pharisees, such a healing wouldn’t qualify for an exception to the rules of the Sabbath.

Jesus stops preaching and calls the man to stand and come forward. I imagine the ambivalence that might have torn at the man’s mind: Jesus is calling me to him; does that mean he’s going to heal me? I so much want to be healed! But on the Sabbath? The scribes and Pharisees are sitting right there. Is there going to be trouble? Maybe I should have stayed home today…

Every eye in the house is fixed on the two men. But Jesus doesn’t simply pronounce the man healed. He turns to the scribes and Pharisees and confronts them with a dagger of a question:

Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” (Luke 6:9, NIV)

Luke doesn’t tell us whether the scribes and Pharisees attempted to answer. Mark, however, writes that “they remained silent” (Mark 3:4)—as well they might. Jesus’ question cut straight to the heart of what made the Sabbath legalism of the Pharisees untenable. On any other day, the answer to the question would be obvious. Of course we’re supposed to do good, not evil. Of course we should work to save life rather than kill and destroy.

But if that’s the case, then why on the Sabbath, a day made holy by God, should we refrain from good? It’s as if Jesus were saying, You know that it’s not only lawful but righteous to do good to others, especially those who need healing. So tell me: what makes it unlawful to do good on the Sabbath?

The scribes and Pharisees had an opportunity to rethink their stance—if they were willing. But they weren’t willing. One might add here that there was also an ongoing debate between liberal and conservative rabbis on what was and wasn’t permitted on the Sabbath, so loyalty to the more conservative school may have played a role in their stubborn refusal to take Jesus’ words to heart. And since they remained silent, Jesus pressed on:

He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus. (vss. 10-11)

Mark adds that Jesus was “deeply distressed” as their stubbornness (3:5), using a word that suggests grief or sorrow. And lest anyone doubt the intentions of the scribes and Pharisees at that point, Mark doesn’t just say that they discussed “what they might do to Jesus”; rather, they “went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus” (vs. 6).

This is a surprising alliance, because the Herodians were Jews who supported the line of Herod the Great, including his son Herod Antipas. Many Jews considered the Herodians traitors because of their collaboration with the Roman Empire. And the Pharisees criticized Jesus for eating with tax collectors? But as the saying goes, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” If the Pharisees and Herodians couldn’t agree on anything else, they at least agreed on their murderous hatred of Jesus.

Again, it’s not always helpful to read these stories with a dismissive attitude toward the Pharisees, as if they were simply evil and clueless, as if we would have done better if we had been in their place. Rather, the story invites us to consider our own biases, our own self-satisfied rationalizations for looking down on or even hating others. God will help us. But are we willing?