Has anyone ever told you upfront that you had to grant them their request? In reality they weren’t requesting at all. They were demanding. They were pretending to give you the option of granting or refusing, but in reality they were simply trying to get their way. Not the best diplomatic move.
We see this done in a passive-aggressive way all the time in the media. The opposition is painted as some evil force. Then it becomes easy to support, and very painful to oppose those in power. We see this in the debate now framed as “intolerance.” But as I have said before, in order to label someone intolerant, you must make a value judgment about their position, and then deem that position as one that must not be allowed. This is the definition of intolerance. So to label someone intolerant, the labelers must themselves by definition be intolerant. Thus they force people to align themselves with their position or be thrown to the wolves by being labeled “intolerant” and suffer the shaming consequences.
Two of Jesus’ disciples think they can twist Jesus’ arm. They must not have been listening to Jesus’ teaching! They must not have been watching His example of service of others. Somewhere along the line they became their own worst enemies. Have you ever become your own worst enemy?
I must wonder what was going through James and John’s minds as they approached Jesus. I wonder what the discussion had been from which they concluded it would be a good idea to ask Jesus for top billing with Him. And who decided to approach Jesus this way? Why had they excluded the other ten from their discussion?
It is amazing that when we get by ourselves and begin to let our imaginations run wild, we can come up with some pretty crazy ideas. When we isolate ourselves, cut off connection with our peers, ignore the wisdom of the Scriptures, we can get pretty far afield very rapidly. We usually don’t notice that we are drifting away, but others usually notice it pretty rapidly. They will often point it out to us, but we brush it off and ignore them.
The Arnold Journey 