ガラテヤの信徒への手紙1:13-14 Galatians 1:13-14,
あなたがたは、わたしがかつてユダヤ教徒としてどのようにふるまっていたかを聞いています。わたしは、徹底的に神の教会を迫害し、滅ぼそうとしていました。 （ガラテヤ1:13）
パウロはクリスチャンになる前は「ユダヤ教」の教師であり、クリスチャンを迫害して殺したり牢に入れたりしていました。ただし、殺すと言っても自分の手で殺すのではなく、「ユダヤ教徒」の人々がクリスチャンを殺すことに賛成していたということです。「ユダヤ教徒」の人々は旧約聖書の律法を守って生活することに熱心でした。
民数記25章には、イスラエルの人々が、エジプトを脱出して40年の荒野の旅をし、その旅も終わりに近づいて、シティムという場所に滞在したときに起こった事件が記されています。その場所には偶像を礼拝するモアブ人たちが住んでいました。イスラエルの男たちはモアブ人の女たちを好きになり、みだらな行いを始めました。すると、モアブ人の女たちは自分たちの神々を礼拝するようにイスラエルの人々を招き、イスラエルの人々はそれに従って偶像礼拝をするようになってしまったのです。十戒の第一の戒めである「あなたには、わたしをおいてほかに神があってはならない」に違反する行いを始めたのでした。そのようなことをしていては、約束の地を目前にしながら神様の怒りによって滅びてしまう恐れがありました。そこで、祭司のピネハスという人が槍を取って、みだらな行いをしているイスラエル人の男とモアブ人の女を刺し殺したのです。そして、このピネハスの律法を守ろうとする熱心のゆえに、神様の怒りによって起こった災いがやみ、イスラエルの人々は救われました。それでも、災いがやむまでに、二万四千人の人が死んだというのです。
みなさまの中には、このピネハスの律法を守ろうとする熱心を、激しすぎて恐ろしいと思われる方もあるでしょう。確かに、旧約聖書の記述を読むと、みだらな行いをしている者たちを問答無用で殺したように記されています。クリスチャンである私たちが、これと同じようなことをしてはならないのは、言うまでもないことです。しかし、旧約聖書の時代には、これくらいの厳しさをもって、イスラエルの人々に神様の律法を守ることの大切さを示す必要があったのでしょう。実際、イスラエルの人々が神様の律法を守らなかったために、イスラエルの王国は南北二つに分裂し、北のイスラエル王国は紀元前722年に、南のユダ王国は紀元前587年に滅亡してしまいました。その後、ユダ王国を滅ぼしたバビロン帝国は、紀元前539年にペルシア帝国によって滅ぼされました。そして、その翌年、ペルシア帝国のキュロス王は、バビロンに捕囚として連れて来られていたユダ王国の人々がエルサレムに帰ることを許しました。エルサレムに帰って来たユダ王国の人々は、神殿を再建し、祭司エズラによって律法を熱心に守るように指導を受けました。こうして、律法を熱心に守る「ユダヤ教」が成立していきました。 （3月26日の説教より）
In biblical times and even today, people belonging to ethnic and religious minorities are persecuted. When we think of people being persecuted in the modern world, we think of the Uighur people in China, the Rohingya people in Myanmar and the Kurdish people in Turkey. Christians are also persecuted in countries ruled by Islamic fundamentalist powers, and there is a history of persecution of Jewish people by so-called Christians, as in the massacres of Jews by Nazi Germany. Why do humans persecute minorities? The causes can be explained from various perspectives. One such explanation is provided by psychology.
There is a bias in the human mind called “in-group bias.” SENOO Takeharu, a researcher in perceptual psychology and professor of Kyushu University, wrote an article in a magazine entitled “The Fear of In-group Bias.” In the first part of the article, SENOO explains “in-group bias” as follows.
We humans unconsciously think that the group to which we belong is a “good” one. Our homeland, our hometown, the school we came from, and club activities we belong to, few people speak ill of these things. Most Japanese people think that Japan is a beautiful country and that the Japanese are clever people. They love their university and high school and are proud of the excellent schools they attended. It is also normal for people to cherish the warmth of the people in their hometowns. These mental movements are referred to in psychology by the technical term “in-group bias.” The academic definition of “in-group bias” is “the belief by humans that the group to which they themselves belong is superior to other groups.”
Thus, the “in-group” is the group to which you belong. The group to which you do not belong is called the “out-group.” The “in-group bias” then leads to a low opinion of the “out-group.” In other words, people assume that the group to which they do not belong is of a low level and the group to which they belong is of a high level. Moreover, humans have the mental characteristic of making such assumptions without any objective basis. The cause of such beliefs, according to SENOO, is “the workings of the unconscious mind to maintain and raise self-esteem by evaluating oneself positively.” SENOO further explains the “black sheep effect” of in-group bullying as follows. This is about, metaphorically speaking, a small number of black sheep in a group of white sheep being bullied.
It has been pointed out that “in-group bias” can also lead to in-group “bullying.” There is a psychological effect known as the “black sheep effect.” In order to maintain the high value of the in-group, in-group members who may diminish the value of the in-group are an eyesore and a hindrance. Therefore, we humans have the psychological trait of actively trying to bully or exclude from the group those members of the in-group who are considered inferior. This is the psychological effect known as the black sheep effect, which is also the cause of bullying.
I do not believe that the causes of persecution and bullying can be explained by psychology alone. The causes are complex. However, this view of the “in-group bias” or “black sheep effect” may provide a clue when considering the problem of persecution, which has continually occurred from biblical times to the present day.
In New Testament times, Christians, who were a small minority in the society, were persecuted in various ways. One of these was persecution from Jewish leaders and believers, and the other was persecution from those in power in the Roman Empire and those who believed in the Greek and Roman religions. Today I would like to consider the persecution from the Jewish leaders and believers of the two. Today’s Bible passage reads as follows.
For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.
As noted here, Paul was a Jewish teacher before he became a Christian, and he persecuted Christians, killing them and putting them in prison. However, when he kills, it is not with his own hands, but with the approval of the Jews to kill Christians. The Jews were zealous about living according to the Old Testament Law. The nature of the zeal of the Jews can be seen from the Old Testament and the documents of the later period. Among the Old Testament references, there is the zeal to keep God’s Law as demonstrated by a man called Phinehas during the wilderness journey of the Israelites who had departed from Egypt to the promised land. Let me read Numbers chapter 25 verses 1-9 in the Old Testament.
While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel. And the LORD said to Moses, “Take all the chiefs of the people and hang them in the sun before the LORD, that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel.” And Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you kill those of his men who have yoked themselves to Baal of Peor.”
And behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his family, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the people of Israel, while they were weeping in the entrance of the tent of meeting. When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly. Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped. Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand.
This incident occurred when the Israelites had departed from Egypt and spent 40 years in the wilderness, and were near the end of their journey, staying at a place called Shittim. The place was inhabited by Moabites who worshipped idols. The Israelite men fell in love with the Moabite women. The Moabite women then invited the Israelites to worship their gods, and the Israelites obeyed and began to worship idols. They began to violate the first commandment of the Ten Commandments, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Doing so threatened to destroy themselves in the face of God’s anger, with the promised land in sight. So a priest named Phinehas took a spear and stabbed an Israelite man and a Moabite woman to death for their bawdy behaviour. And because of the zeal of Phinehas to keep the Law, the plague caused by God’s anger ceased, and the Israelites were saved. Nevertheless, 24,000 people died before the plague ceased.
Some of you may find this zeal to keep the Law of Phinehas too intense and frightening. Indeed, the Old Testament describes that Phinehas killed these man and woman without admonishing their misconducts. It goes without saying that we, as Christians, must not do the same thing. However, in Old Testament times, it would have been necessary to show the Israelites the importance of keeping God’s Law with this degree of severity. In fact, the Israelites’ failure to keep God’s Law caused the Kingdom of Israel to split in two, north and south, with the northern Kingdom of Israel being destroyed in 722 BC and the southern Kingdom of Judah in 587 BC. The Babylonian Empire, which destroyed the Kingdom of Judah, was destroyed by the Persian Empire in 539 BC. The following year, King Cyrus of the Persian Empire allowed the people of the Kingdom of Judah, who had been brought into captivity to Babylon, to return to Jerusalem. On their return to Jerusalem, the people of the Kingdom of Judah rebuilt the Temple and were instructed by the priest Ezra to diligently observe the Law. Thus, “Judaism,” the zealous observance of the Law, was established.
The time of Ezra the priest and the time of Jesus Christ are more than 400 years apart. Those 400 years are an in-between period between the times described in the Old Testament and the times described in the New Testament. During that in-between period, a major event in the history of the world took place. That was when Alexander the Great of Greece conquered Persia and Egypt and established a great empire in a single generation. However, this empire ended after one generation of Alexander the Great, and the empire was divided by his successor generals. The province of Judea became the scene of a territorial struggle between the Ptolemies, who ruled Egypt, and the Seleucids, who ruled Mesopotamia and Syria. After a long struggle, the Seleucid Syrian Kingdom came to dominate the Judean region.
When Antiochus IV became king of the Seleucid Syrian Kingdom in 175 BC, he seized the treasures of the Temple in Jerusalem and made them his own. He forbade the Jewish people from worshipping the Lord God in the traditional way, and put to death those who kept the Sabbath or circumcision laws or offered sacrifices to the Lord God. Furthermore, he closed the altar of sacrifice to the Lord God in the Jerusalem Temple and replaced it with an altar to the Greek god Zeus. Against such heavy-handed rule, the Jewish people revolted and triumphed. The first leader of the revolt was a man called Mattathias the priest. According to the Book of First Maccabees, one of the Catholic Church’s second canonical books, Mattathias declared that he would never abandon the Law of the Lord God and cut down the Jews who wanted to offer sacrifices to idol gods and the king’s officials who forced them to do so. The Book of First Maccabees describes this act of Mattathias as follows, “he burned with zeal for the Law, just as Phinehas did.” Mattathias then calls on the people, “Let every one who is zealous for the Law and supports the covenant come out with me!” (cf. 1 Maccabees 2:19-28).
I have mentioned the passages of Numbers and 1 Maccabees in this way because I hope you to understand that Paul’s zeal in persecuting the Christian church was not based on mere personal feelings, but on a long Jewish tradition. From the Jewish perspective, Christians who worshipped Jesus as the Son of God were those who were to be killed because they violated the first commandment of the Ten Commandments, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Paul was persecuting Christians because he was convinced that they were doing what was right according to God’s will. In Philippians 3:5-6, Paul writes that he was “as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” Paul, who had so thoroughly persecuted and sought to destroy the Christian church with conviction, was converted and became a Christian because he received “a revelation of Jesus Christ,” as in verse 12 before today’s passages.
As I have spoken many times in my sermons, the two ways of life – keeping the commandments in order to be saved and keeping the commandments in order to express thanks for being saved – are, on the surface, very similar. At first glance, people who live both ways of life seem to be living the same way. However, they are actually quite different. This is because the way of life of keeping the commandments in order to be saved presupposes that one can keep the commandments, whereas the way of life of keeping the commandments in order to express thanks for being saved presupposes that one cannot keep the commandments completely. And when you get down to the life of keeping the commandments in order to be saved, you come to the terrible conclusion that it is right to kill those who do not keep the commandments, as Paul did when he persecuted Christians.
Christians walk in line with God’s commandments under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in order to express their thanks for being saved. However, when they think that they are able to do this to a certain extent, there is a danger that they will delude themselves that they are able to keep God’s commandments in their own strength. Such an illusion will lead them to exclude, rather than educate, those who do not keep the commandments. As I spoke about at the beginning of today’s sermon, the mentality becomes such that one assumes that the group to which one belongs is of a high level of goodness and tries to persecute those who are considered to be inferior within it. That would be to become a Judaism-Christian, so to speak. To avoid this, we should always return to the starting point of our faith, that we are sinners saved only by the grace of the Cross of Christ. And, standing on such a starting point of faith, shall we form a community of faith that can educate those who do not keep the commandments.