One of the tendencies of humans is to create groups. Groups can be good for survival. Groups can be bad for cooperation. Groups create ‘us’ and ‘them,’ Democrat and Republican, 99% and 1%, union and open shop, public sector and private sector, veteran and civilian, pro-life and pro-abortion, inside the beltway and the rest of the country, management and workers. The list of these types of ‘us’ and ‘them’ groups could go on almost endlessly. And most of these could be split into even smaller groups.
Gallup, the organization that does polls, has mastered the art of counting these types of divides. They plan their questions so that the differences can be measured, and then the results sold for a profit to those who wish to exploit those differences. Don’t think for one minute that they do this because they love counting things. They ask questions in order to make a profit. They are capitalists.
The disciples were just like us. They divided people into groups. They had the ‘us’ group which included only a very small group of people who were close to Jesus. As you can imagine they probably knew lots about each other. They had to have something to talk about as they walked from place to place. They knew about each other’s families, their upbringing, their weird relatives, the childhood accidents and resulting scars, and about previous and perhaps current love interests. Most of the disciples were married by the end of their life.
So the disciples see someone doing what they thought only people in the ‘us’ category should be doing. They tell them to stop. They didn’t think they were qualified to do ‘us’ kinds of things. They were ‘them’, after all, and not one of ‘us’. Jesus hadn’t specifically given them permission and power to do demon-casting kind of work.
The disciples had been given something special, or at least that is what they thought, and they didn’t want their specialness being taken away by one of ‘them’. It could be that they thought they were doing the right thing in that moment, that they were upholding standards.
They problem wasn’t that the disciples were mistaken about there being in ‘us’ when it comes to Jesus, but their rules for being in the ‘us’ group were too narrow. Jesus Himself made ‘us’ and ‘them’ distinctions. If you aren’t for me, you are against me. Follow me, not follow anyone you want to follow. Walk in the light because there are those who walk in the darkness. Have righteousness that exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees. Sheep and goats. Salt and compost pile material.
The problem with the disciples is that they drew the circle too small. They were excluding people who had the necessary entrance qualification, but were not part of the inner circle. There were people who put their trust in Jesus as the Messiah, but were not with Jesus in the same way that the disciples were. They had jobs and family and obligations, but they still trusted Jesus and His word.
Make sure you examine closely the perimeter lines of your group. Don’t exclude people who want to join, but lack some insignificant discriminator. Don’t kick out people needlessly.
The Arnold Journey 