URC Daily Devotion 13th September

After the buttering-up of the Governor, they try a two-pronged attack on Paul. First, Tertullus appeals to the Governor’s wish for order and peace, trying to set Felix against Paul as an ‘agitator’. Then he appeals to the Roman uniformity, trying to marginalise Paul as a ‘ringleader of the sect of the Nazarene’.
 
Perhaps this is the time to ask what this group of Jews had against Paul and the Christians. In the words of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ – “Why do the nations so furiously rage together? And why do the people imagine a vain thing?”
 
For me, the ‘vain thing’ is when one group is so sure they are ‘right’ that anyone who doesn’t agree is not only ‘wrong’ but ‘subhuman’ and therefore worthy to be eliminated. They need to ‘purify’ the human race from everything outside their definition of ‘rightness’.
 
So this group of Jews was so sure of their interpretation of the Torah, they believed the ‘Nazarene’ and his followers must be purged.
 
Now, I know some people would say I am a wet liberal, but I don’t think I could ever be so sure of anything in my faith that I could purge another human being for believing differently. What about you?