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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Yeah, I knew someone would say this. He’s calling a group of people that are trying to kill him a brood of vipers and damning them to hell. That reads to me as hate. If anyone other than Jesus was making those statements it would be interpreted by most people as hate.

    Yes, under Christian theology Jesus doesn’t hate people because that is the backbone of the entire belief system. But without that presupposition, Jesus’s statements to the Pharisees sound a lot like hate.

    Edit: But tbf, his hatred is probably directed towards the entire institution rather than the individual members. Like how people hate the police but may not necessarily hate every single police officer.


  • This one isn’t Jesus but John the Baptist but has a similar vibe:

    7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. 10 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Matthew 3:7-10

    John 7:25-54 has a kind of funny interaction between Jesus and the Pharisees. Basically Jesus is preaching and saying he is the Messiah. Some of the Pharisees flip out about this and send the temple guards to arrest him. The guards hear Jesus speaking and then come back without arresting him. Then the following conversation happens:

    45 Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”

    46 “No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied.

    47 “You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. 48 “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? 49 No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”

    50 Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, 51 “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”

    52 They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”

    Another interaction between them:

    9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

    10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

    12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

    Matthew 9:9-13

    Another one:

    10 And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: 11 it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” 12 Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” 13 He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. 14 Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

    Matthew 15:11-14 (rest of the chapter is pretty good too).


  • "13 But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. 15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves…

    23 Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

    25 Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean…

    33 You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?"

    Matthew 23:13, 15, 23-26, 33

    The entire chapter is a rant against them but I just picked out some of the more damning language against them.