Then [Jesus] called the crowd again and said do them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile... For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."
-Mark 7:14-15, 21-22.

Some two thousand years ago, Jesus said these words to the Pharisees - the religious leaders of Jesus' day. These words came in the midst of an argument about what people could eat, and how they should eat it. The Pharisees were very concerned with always eating the right foods, and with making sure that they didn't touch anything that would, in some way, make them 'unclean'. Jesus found their concern to be a little misguided, and told them so.

These days, most Christians I know don't worry too much about what they eat, or at least not for the same reasons that the Pharisees did. Sure, I try to eat well, and to avoid stuff I know is bad for me. And if I do that because I'm trying to take good care of the body God gave me - a good practice, I think, for all of us - then I guess you could say I watch what I eat for religious reasons. But that's not really what the Pharisees were worried about.

The Pharisees were worried about doing the wrong thing, about eating something 'impure' and wrecking their perfect track record. For these guys, being right with God was about not screwing up, about keeping all the commandments perfectly.

Trouble is, when you're really worried about being right all the time, about being perfect, then it's easy to start caring more about your own perfection then about the needs of those around you. I don't think the Pharisees were trying to be sinister villains, though they often come across that way in the Bible. I believe they genuinely tried to be good people. The trouble was that they'd just gotten so worried about being good people that they'd lost track of something more important - loving other people.

Most of us don't worry about food restrictions in the way that the Pharisees did, and that can make it hard to feel like Jesus' words are really intended for us... but they are. Jesus reminds us that we can't prove ourselves to be good people just by staying away from things or people that we consider to be bad. If we take that approach to life, we're far too likely to spend too much time judging others and not enough time loving them.

Jesus reminds us that it's what takes place within us that matters. We'll be judged by what comes from within us, and not by what's near us.

What difference will this make in your life this week?