Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And there was a woman who had had a spirit of infirmity for 18 years; she was bent over and could not fully straighten herself.
When Jesus saw her, he called her and said to her, "Woman, you are freed from your infirmity." And he laid his hands upon her, and immediately she was made straight; and she praised God.
But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be healed, not on the Sabbath day!"
Then the Lord answered him, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger, and lead it away to water it?
"And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for 18 years, be loosed from this bound on the Sabbath day?"
As he said this, all his adversaries were put to shame; and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.
4 comments:
"Hypocrites" doesn't imply "insincere" here; what we've got is the Greek word for "actor".
People "going through the motions."
Jesus' action looks wrong to such a person because he's seeing it through a literal reading of the Sabbath legislation. And also, he probably sees this as an issue precisely because it's Jesus doing it-- that troublemaker stirring all the people up; who knows where it's going to end?
Okay, I see this going a little farther.
"Hypocrites!" People judging an action because of who's doing it, not what it is. Obama good! Bush bad! Or the other way around, depending. People adjusting their vision to fit their loyalties. A slight bend in the integrity...
Ah! can any of us be more than subjective, which is to say, speak out of our own experience?
Okay, there's this operational definition of "objective": ~Anybody who tries 'this' will get 'that'.
And then there's a more absolute definition: ~The 'that' I experience when I try 'this'-- is really How It Is.
The Pythagorean Theorem is supposed to be objective in that second sense, to be really "the way things are" [provided we're in a 'flat' Euclidean universe.]
So the theorem ought to fit that first definition. But how many people (including the vast numbers who routinely use some application of it) could say that it's intuitively clear to them? The proof in my high school geometry book was no doubt valid, but didn't do it for me. But there is a simple two-part diagram that makes it obvious!
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For someone who doesn't "do his own math," this can look like "just Forrest's experience."
But if I "figure it out myself" (with or without help) and see what Pythagoras saw-- then "my own experience" isn't "just mine".
"My own experience" is the only kind that can be objective-- paradoxical as this sounds. Because relying on "authority", of whatever kind, can only reflect my choice of who to believe, which could easily differ from anyone else's.
Some people say we've got "a fair witness" inside. I've come to believe that; when I was a kid reading the Bible, I think I felt this at work in me. That isn't to say that I've ever been infallible... but that there's a knowing in here, even when I (as an ego being) don't recognize it.
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