Yesterday’s reading includes Luke 26:6 in which Jesus gives us a warning:
“Woe to you when all speak well of you,
for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.”
When we hear Jesus giving us such a serious warning, “woe” being eternal unhappiness, it’s sane to take it seriously. We are being individually warned because nearly all of us are still at the level where we want others to “speak well of” us.
Jesus does not seem to think it a concern when “some” speak well of us. It is when “all” speak well of us that we are threatened with “woe”. When we try to please everyone, we are false prophets. The lost souls who take false prophets seriously speak well of them. False prophets worship a false god. In this case, Jesus names a false idol: Having All Speak Well of Me.
Jesus correctly identifies this as Idol worship. Those who worship Having All Speak Well of Me are doomed to woe.
Pleasing the Idol of Public Opinion gains the approval of multitudes. In democracies, the Idol of Public Opinion must be endlessly appeased, pandered to, and satisfied. False prophets arrive on the stage to do all those things. If a person fails to pander, another worshiper of Having All Speak Well of Me waits in the wings to drive the less attentive worshiper of Having All Speak Well of Me from the stage. “Woe” follows.
His warning indirectly tells the rest of us: When we realize that a person is telling us what we want to hear, we must understand that we have been selected as one of those who is desired to “speak well of” the idol worshiper trying to gain our approval. We must realize that we, our humble selves, have been made into an idol.
We may be led astray by the gratifying temptation of being pandered to by a professional idol worshiper who adores Having All Speak Well of Me to such an extent that “He is talking to Me!”
This process turns us into an idol being worshiped by a famous worshiper of Having All Speak Well of Me. It is a temptation that is difficult to resist.
Sometimes, the sheer joy of being pandered to by someone who worships Having All Speak Well of Me is so great that it crystallizes in the most absurd self-glorification that democracies have been able to produce, with those who worship Having All Speak Well of Me proclaiming that “The voice of the people is the voice of God.”
All those in the temple of the damned agree.
