Biblical Meanderings: Mark 3:22-30

recorded by a babbling brook

And the scribes who had come down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebub [Satan], and by the prince of the demons he drives out demons.” So he called them together and began to speak to them in parables.

“How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, it cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand. And if Satan is divided and rises against himself, he cannot stand, the end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house to steal his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house. Truly I tell you, the sons of men will be forgiven all sins and blasphemies, as many as they utter. But the one who blasphemes against the holy spirt has no forgiveness; he is guilty of an ageless sin.” (Because they were claiming, “he has an unclean spirit.”)

A lot of you asked me about my relation to the Bible and whether I’m a Christian. I don’t know whether I am a Christian or not; I was confirmed, but I don’t go to church much. But I do read the Bible, because it makes me a better person. Scripture is a difficult stuff to digest. It’s like unseasoned meat, plain tofu, kombucha. So you have to expend some mental energy digesting it; you have to interrogate it and sit with it. In doing so, you develop skills that help you in your life. Once you learn how to digest scripture, you can digest anything that comes along in life. A lot of you have had the Bible used as a weapon against you. That’s not ok, and I’m sorry you had to suffer like that. You can’t force people to take scripture against their will. If you don’t want to look at this series, I understand. If you’re willing to give it a try, thank you.

So in this passage, I’ll break down my own side process of how I digest scripture. There are two things going on in this passage: there’s a story about Jesus and the scribes from Jerusalem, and within that story there’s a parable. The “scribes from Jerusalem” means religious authority. Judea was under Roman control, but the Jewish courts had a limited authority to govern their own people. The scribes held power in the court. They’re going to be the villains in this story, because they are trying to maintain earthly power, and Jesus represents a divine power that they can’t control. So they’re going to try and get rid of him. Here they accuse him of being possessed by evil spirits, which is a pretty serious accusation. People wanted to get rid of their evil spirits; they didn’t want to gather more of them. So they’re slandering him in a big way.

Jesus responds by telling them a parable. It’s difficult to define what a parable is. Basically, it’s a part of the text where you have to stop reading it like it’s a text and start looking at it like it’s a painting. If you look at a painting for 30 seconds, you might be able to summarize what’s going on in it, but you won’t have actually experienced the painting. If you look at a painting for an hour, or an hour every night for a year, then you’ll have an inner impression of the painting which has nothing to do with that initial summary. You recall the colors, the expressions on the people in the painting, what they’re looking at, what they’re feeling. You go through your life and you see things that remind you of the painting. A parable is like that. If you sit with it, you start to understand it, but not in a sense like, “Oh, I understand this now, I can move on.” You don’t want to move on from it; you want to keep dwelling on it, like a good painting you can come back to.

A good place to start with a parable is to look at the images that are presented within it, and just conjure them up in your mind. This parable starts with a series of three images: a kingdom, a house, and Satan. What comes to mind when you think of a kingdom? Castles, vast expanses of land, many different people. Ultimately it’s the people that make up a kingdom. Trees don’t appoint a king tree. But people fall into groups with communal rules. You form a little bubble; you’re protected and guided by the rules of the community. When there is disagreement on those rules, suddenly the protective bubble breaks; there’s no more community. It’s a bunch of people at odds with each other. This is the “divided kingdom.”

Next there is the “house”, which really means “family”, because families live in houses. This is the same idea, but more personal. A family is a very intimate bubble. Familial dispute can be incredibly painful, because you lose that bubble. Using the word “house” is interesting, because a house is what helps shape and define the family. You go to your room and shut the door. It’s protective. On Esther Perel’s podcast there was a woman remembering her childhood - her father was throwing a tennis ball against her door early in the morning, and the family dog would fetch it. And she had this great sense of violation. “I can’t have my space, and I can’t do anything to change it - if I tell him to stop, he’ll yell at me.” That was a defining moment for her as an adult. That’s what I think of with “house divided” - tennis balls against the door. The barriers break down.

Then we come to “Satan”. “Satan” in Hebrew means “accuser”. That’s an important place to start. Anyone can be an accuser. In Jewish cosmology, God has a cabinet of angels that he interacts with. They do his will, and they also report back. On his right side, there are a host of angels who support mankind - guardian angels. They keep us from misdeeds, and they report back to God - “Oh, they’re not really so bad. They can actually be quite good.” Then on the left side, you have a host of angels who dislike mankind. They’re constantly telling God that God should punish humans, maybe get rid of them. They hold up all humanity’s misdeeds and say, “how can you sleep on this?” So Satan, as a spiritual figure, represents that left side. He is the accuser of mankind. He is the original hater. He has no belief in the positive capacity of humanity. He tries to tempt humans down the wrong path, and then shows them off to God as an example.

So what does it mean for Satan to be divided against himself? You can think of it like a person divided against himself. Jesus isn’t big on grand, cosmological theories. He always brings it back to the human level; that’s his whole deal. He creates the cosmos on a personal scale, and he uses the people surrounding him like he’s a director and they’re actors on a stage. These people come to represent all the energies of the universe. The scribes accuse him of working for Satan, but by the end of the parable he’s flipped it - it’s his accusers who work for The Accuser. They are the non-believers in human spiritual power.

We all do this - scoff in the face of something potentially positive. I do it. Someone says, “this guy is a real inspiration to me, he’s so great!” And I think, “oh, he’s probably a terrible person. He probably does all sorts of things behind closed doors.” But whether I turn out to be right or wrong, nobody benefits from me thinking that without any proof. Now if you know someone is doing something wrong, then you should speak it. And if you have a strong sense that someone is about to do you immediate harm, you should acknowledge that and remove yourself from the situation. But most of the time, we’re just making up a guy in our head to get mad at. Speculating the worst intentions behind something that people are saying is good is a useless activity. Nobody’s giving out “You Guessed It Awards” when somebody everyone thinks is good turns out to be bad.

Not only that, but you’re also cutting yourself off from your inner soul. When we speculate on someone behaving badly, we’re holding them in judgement based on our own past experiences. It’s really a judgement on ourselves: “I was a fool to believe like this earlier in my life. If I let myself believe again, I’ll be a fool again.” You can’t forgive yourself for experiencing disappointment - you’re holding yourself in a place of non-forgiveness. If you forgive your past self, that foolish little believer who really is still there inside you, then you have to experience all that pain firsthand again. So you run from it, you try to attack it, but really you’re attacking your inner self. This is what he calls “blasphemy”, and it remains unforgiven because you’re the one refusing to forgive. The person holding you in judgment is yourself. You say to yourself, “what could be more foolish than expecting a messiah? What could be more foolish than expecting the divine to live inside a human body?” But what could be more awful than not expecting these things? When you the refuse to believe in the divinity that lives in others, you deny the divinity that lives inside yourself.

Ok, we haven’t even finished the parable yet, but that’s probably enough for today. Thanks for tuning in.