Cooking Yeast and Pharisees

It’s a little past 7 AM and as I was taking out the trash, a thought occurred to me. About the Pharisees.

Let me explain.

One of the things I do on a regularly basis is make sure there isn’t anything stale or past date in my refrigerator. If there is, out it goes. Today, that item was cooking yeast. Yeast I’ve only used three times in the last year and a half because I eat much less yeasted food these days.

And as I was tying up the bag and walking out to the trash can, suddenly I got a vision of the Pharisees. Old yeast. Pharisees. It seemed fitting; in fact, Jesus spoke of the yeast of the Pharisees at times… but this is a different analogy.

There is new yeast, and there is old yeast, but yeast is yeast. There were Pharisees in the day of Jesus and there are Pharisees now, though we call them by other names. They are the “don’t break any rules or else” crowd. Do you know anyone in that category? Anyone who feels entitled to tell everyone else how to run and live their own lives? Entitled to “decide for others” when in reality it is those others’ decisions to make?

Not all the Pharisees in Jesus’ day were mean-spirited and overly zealous in their “decide for others” mentality and the judgment that went along with it; and today, the same is true.

Some people stock it up to personality: I’m this or that on Myers-Briggs or The Big Five and so I’m not to blame. God made me this way, so why change?

Others believe there is no God and therefore nobody to be accountable for, and so why try to mind their own business when trying someone else’s business on for size is more fun? But there’s news for you who are in this camp: not only does God exist, but He cares about you and what you do.

There is something to be said for personality and something to be said for gifting, true. But these same gifting and personalities are never… I repeat never… to be an excuse for taking responsibility for our behaviors, words, attitudes. Yes, God made us a certain way, but that doesn’t mean He made us tell others what to do or judge others: those are between God and the person in question.

So as I threw out the yeast, I decided, once again, to not judge others; to not try to make their decisions for them. It is rare that I do either: I’m good enough at judging myself, why try a new tack at the skill? But for the few times that I have; that I do; I need a different approach. I need to decide not to be a Pharisee. I need to decide to throw the yeast of deciding for others and of judgment out like I threw the literal yeast in the trash today.

We don’t all have the same yeast to toss… but we all have something yeasty to remove if we are to live a better life and treat others in the way we would wish to be treated.

I challenge you to toss out the yeast!

1-      Figure out what your yeast is.

2-      Figure out if it is Pharisaical in nature or not.

3-      If it is, toss it out.

4-      If it isn’t, but needs replaced, what will you replace it with?

5-      That which needs replaced still needs tossed out!