Not for our tribe alone [Jn 11]

Caiaphas is accounted among the prophets. And he, like Balaam is damned.

Damned. For he did the calculus, like a good little utilitarian, and decided what led to the greatest good for the greatest number was correct. He was acting like a good little satrap, ensuring the empire did not put down the Jewish nation this week.

And in so doing, damned the Jewish religion and destroyed the temple.

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on they made plans to put him to death.

Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and there he stayed with the disciples.

(John 11:45-54 ESV)

Utilitarianism has no sense of right or wrong. It is completely expedient. Caiaphas would do whatever it took to keep the temple going. If that required him appealing to a pagan Caesar, or his thuggish minions, he would do so. He was a political creature. His council was fairly corrupt: not all, but many.

Yet John calls him a prophet, for what he said applied to Christ. Christ was to die, but not for one nation, for all nations.

The current elite is global, and like the Romans, what the genius of the civilization adored in all places: the rainbow of deviancy, the tolerant of Islam but not Buddha, Krishna or Christ, and the dissolution of local traditions and ways. This is the heresy of Babel, and that we must oppose.

But we also need to remember that all nations are of equal value. It is right and good and proper to belong to a country, a tribe, a nation. To preserve the traditions and folk ways. To work within the local rules.

An example: my clinical head is from California. When he arrived in NZ, he did not understand why no one asked about handguns when discussing suicide.

Not knowing that the only legal guns here are rifles and shotguns, and the regulations are stringent. We have different ways. The ways of the British Empire or the United States are not universal, and the rights claimed are not natural, but hard-won.

We must consider in all situations what is right. We must not work by a mathematics that counts people only for their value, and allows the innocent to die or suffer for convenience.

It is generally an idea to work with local people and respect the customs which are morally neutral.

And in all places, preach Christ crucified. For his message was not for our tribe alone.