Fine Ways of Disregarding Vital Issues

Observing the preoccupations of Pharisees, scribes and religious leaders of his time (Mark 7: 1-23) Jesus commended that they have fine ways of disregarding the commandments of God in order to maintain human traditions and interests. They put aside weightier matters to uphold human decrees.

In modern politics we hear the jargon, ‘politics of distraction’. In a country of mass illiteracy and unemployment, farmers’ suicide, etc. politicians and other key people divert public attention by discussing building temples, girls wearing hijab to college, etc. Noam Chomsky, an American social commentator says, “The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.”

The corrupt politicians must have learned this strategy from the pickpockets (or is it visa versa): they distract the victim and rob them of what they have. The curious difference is that in the case of modern political elections the victims themselves elect their pickpockets.

Elections

The gospel passage asks as to why are people, who are supposed to be minding spiritual and moral affairs, spending so much time discussing on what is allowed to eat and what they are not allowed to eat, as if that determines the moral and spiritual health of people. In other words, why are you distracting yourselves with it? And Jesus added; spend time with what really defiles us. It is what comes out of a person that defiles a person morally and spiritually. Care for our hearts and minds from where come evil designs, greed, malice, slander, pride and folly.

Are there parallels for politics of convenient distraction in today’s Church? Of course, we distract ourselves from gender discrimination, privileged patriarchy, etc. but repeatedly focusing our energies on rituals, rubrics of rituals, and so on.

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