Most of the topics we talk about here on Unapologetic are geared towards equipping you to talk with people who are not Christians about the truth of the Gospel. But sometimes I think it's worthwhile to talk about how we should converse with others who are Christians about our Christian convictions. Because we often have different convictions than other people who are still Christians.

There's this interesting phenomenon that occurs in our Christian subculture sometimes where, if you're not in Christianity, and you say something someone doesn't like, or you have a moral point of view, they might call you a bigot or hateful or something like that. In Christianity, we take our terms from 2,000 years ago, and we might call someone a Pharisee.

To people outside of this discussion, there's often little knowledge of what a Pharisee is. But I think, even inside of Christianity, we have used that term as the analogous term of bigot or hateful because it shuts people up. Because no one wants to be called a Pharisee, right? If you pull that term out, you can get someone to back off of their point of view, back off of the statement they're trying to make, because no one wants to be called a Pharisee.

Personally, I've seen this term being used in the last week or so. You've got some people who are critiquing Disney for redoing Beauty and the Beast with an overtly gay scene. They're talking about this on social media and online, and other people are like, "Well you're being such a Pharisee." Or how about the movie The Shack, which is a movie portrayal of the book with the same title, which is coming out. There are many theological issues in this book and hence in the movie.

I think there's a legitimate concern about people seeing this movie which intends to teach you something about God. Don't be mistaken. It intends to teach something about God even though it's fiction. What it teaches about God is not accurate, so this movie can mislead people. I personally find it very hard to read history and think about history in a history book in a different way than I've seen it in movies. Movies are a persuasive medium.

But as people have critiqued The Shack, other Christians have said, "Well quite being such a Pharisee about things." How should we think about this? Let's talk about what a Pharisee is, actually.

The Pharisees were an ancient Jewish sect, and they were distinguished by their strict observance to traditional and written Jewish law. They thought of themselves as very pious people, and others thought of them and regarded them as very pious people.

For an example of this, the Old Testament law mandated fasting on only one day, the Day of Atonement, but the Pharisees actually fasted twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. Once wasn't good enough for them. They had to be more pious than that. You'll notice as you read the Gospels, that oftentimes they're the ones praying overtly and in front of everyone. They have their own laws, their own code of conduct that they've added onto the Jewish law. They tried to be very pious people.

Now on its own, doing those things isn't necessarily bad. But the term also kind of has a second connotation. It has this connotation of being a self-righteous person, of being a hypocrite. In fact, Jesus calls the Pharisees whitewashed tombs. He says, "Woe to you Pharisees, whitewashed tombs." In other words, you look good on the outside and you are dead on the inside. He also calls them sons of vipers. The critiques go on and on and on. So, no one wants to be called a Pharisee. No one wants to be put in that group of people that Jesus so strongly, consistently condemned.

But I think we need to be clear on something. The problem with the Pharisees wasn't the fact that they followed moral…