Religious arrogance or zealous for truth? -- Lent 2C

This week's passages for the second week of Lent Year C are just plain difficult to wade through. They are comparatively short, but much is said in a few words.

Here is a helpful bit of commentary on this week's Gospel reading from Luke 13:31-35:

"What needs to be heard here is not the fixing of blame for the death of Jesus on Judaism or the whole city of Jerusalem. This text is a call to all of us who have been immersed in a particular religious tradition to search ourselves. When a religious institution views itself as the sole custodian and broker of religious faith, it becomes so obsessed with itself and so determined to perpetuate its authority that any perceived threat to its status is interpreted as blasphemy against God and must be squelched. How easy it is to think that our own understanding of the faith is the absolute truth and therefore any view that challenges our own must be interpreted as unorthodox and condemned and eliminated. Religious arrogance can easily be camouflaged as zeal for God's truth." [Bold text added]

by Jirair Tashjian, CRI The Voice (2015)

These thoughts are quite appropriate as the United States are in the midst of another election season, and for my students at The Naz as we engage some of the more difficult chapters of Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas as the theologian enters into conspiracy against the Third Reich.