aversion

a⋅ver⋅sion

/əˈvɜrʒən, -ʃən/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [uh-vur-zhuhn, -shuhn]
–noun

1.	a strong feeling of dislike, opposition, repugnance, or antipathy (usually fol. by to): a strong aversion to snakes and spiders.

2.	a cause or object of dislike; person or thing that causes antipathy: His pet aversion is guests who are always late.

"Aversion." I used this word today in a conversation with a friend over lunch. It's a good one.

Earlier in our conversation today (as in, before I rocked the use of the word "aversion"), my friend and I were talking about people who had left our church in the past few years. Each person had a unique story, but shared a common underlying reason for leaving:

They didn't like the culture we were creating, the direction we were heading, and/or the means we were using to create it and move towards it.

And this is a very common occurrence in churches (especially in Protestant America)--and, in fact, the Church (universally and historically). Groups of Christian people--or, perhaps better put, groups of churched people--have collectively decided that their church/tradition is either:

-too liberal/worldly/cultural/wishy-washy

or:

-not conservative enough/faithful enough to tradition/God-focused enough/biblically centered enough.

It was the same in Jesus' day.

On the "left," (that is, to the left of Jesus) you had the Sadducees, religious/political Jewish leaders who thought it best to cooperate and even appreciate their Roman captors, encouraging Jews to look up to the dominant Roman/Greek culture and all of its trappings.

On the right (of Jesus), you had the Pharisees, Jewish leaders who thought that a life of strict obedience to God's laws and the Pharisaic prescriptions thereof, over and against Roman culture, was the godly way to go.

On the far right, you had the Essenes, a group of people who thought that the last days were upon them, that they were the only "faithful remnant" of God's chosen Jewish people left on the earth, and that as such it was of critical importance for them to be completely separate from the culture they found themselves in, and to create their own. So, they withdrew into these pseudo-monastic communitites, separate even from their conservative Pharisaic counterparts, to ride out the storm, maintain their purity, and wait for the coming doom of everyone around them.

And then on the extreme right, you had the Zealots--people who thought that violence was the only option, and that God was calling them to be instruments of his judgment on the wicked, pagan Roman invaders. Terrorism was their business, and they did it in the name of God.

Enter Jesus.

The Sadducees didn't like Jesus. He threatened their power relationship with the Romans, mainly by claiming that he was the coming Messiah, the long-promised Son of Man from the apocalyptic book of Daniel--God's instrument of justice to establish his kingdom forever on earth. The Sadducees had already chosen their king, and were reaping the benefits of that choice. Jesus threatened those benefits.

The Pharisees didn't like Jesus. He threatened their concept of God, and their perceived status before God. The God of the Pharisee rewarded obedience, and punished the disobedient. So, status was self-willed: the "more" obedient you willed yourself to be, the better position you had with God. But Jesus had a diffierent concept of what obedience entailed--one that fulfilled God's Law rather than extended it to human preference and conviction. Jesus celebrated with pagans whom he forgave and accepted... so they called him a glutton and a drunkard. Jesus showed preference to the whores, the white-collar cheats, and the common person who responded to his love with their simple faith and repentance... so they devised a plan to kill him. Jesus threatened their concept of a righteous (read: merciless) God and a righteous (read: self-driven) life.

The Zealots... well, we don't know what the Zealots thought of Jesus, at least from the biblical record. We know that Jesus reached out to them--even counted one of them as one of his Twelve. My guess is that the Zealots probably enjoyed it when Jesus stumped the Sadducees and Pharisees, and admired his courage before the power brokers of his day... but some probably thought he was unwilling to take it "far enough." It goes something like this: if you don't bang people over the head with the truth (and in the Zealot's case, literally bang them over the head), you're really just afraid to tell them the whole truth, or something like that.

As for the Essenes--they were probably too busy stockpiling food "Left-Behind-Series" style, writing about the wickedness of all of those around them. They were too busy longing for God to come save them from the wicked world to even notice this Jesus who claimed power to forgive sin and rescue people from their wickedness. It's more than a little ironic that they were so passionate about waiting for the Messiah that they failed to encounter the Messiah.

All of that to say:

The same patterns and categories of people that have existed for millenia in the Church still exist in churches today.

And:

I love being a part of a church that is an aversion (see, I tied it all together) to churched people, for the same reasons that Jesus was an aversion to the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and Zealots.

So:

Which group do you fall into?

And before you say "I fall into God's group," remember:

So did the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and Zealots.