Imagine if there were thirty salesmen sitting in front of the Eucharistic Chapel at your parish and yelling and screaming over each other trying to sell their products to people who were coming there to adore Our Lord, you mean to tell me you wouldn’t get outraged and force them out?? They’re disrespecting the creator of the universe!
It would be horrible indeed,
, although there are a few points I’d like to address.
The market was located in an area just outside the Temple. While semi-holy because of its proximity to the Temple, this outer court wasn’t really similar to a Eucharistic Chapel.
Furthermore the merchants were there for a good reason: people needed suitable animals for sacrificial worship. Especially during the holidays, when pilgrims traveled long distances to Jerusalem, I imagine it was easier to purchase an unblemished goat/lamb/bird in the Temple market than to drag your own animal from home and possibly injure (and disqualify) it.
So the problem wasn’t the market, but how business there was conducted: “Ye have made [the Temple] a den of thieves.” Since the merchants faciliated Temple worship, they should have had high regard for God’s commandments.
Sorry, bad analogy.
1.) Burger King is not a house of worship. It’s a franchised restaurant.
- Jesus didn’t vandalize the temple, he forced certain people who were disrespecting it out of there.
- In your example, Burger King itself is overcharging their customers. Now if there were solicitors outside Burger King trying to take advantage of the customers heading into Burger King, that would be closer to what was happening to the temple when Jesus was there. And the manager of Burger King would have every right to tell those swindlers to get off of his property. And that would not be worthy of arrest as you say.
And Jesus was the “manager” if you will, of the temple. So he had every right and duty to do that.
Jesus showed us here that we sometimes need to take action when there’s evil around us.
Meh, it’s probably a bad analogy, but it’s not the point. Even when someone does something illegal, you don’t enforce the law as an individual, even if you’re on the recieving end. If you steal my car, it’s wrong. But I cannot punish you – I must follow a “fair” system to recieve justice and allow a court to punish you, not take matters in my own hands.
There was also a “fair” legal system in Judea.
As a man Jesus had no “ownership” over the Temple; he arrived as a pilgrim, like everyone else, and ironically would have been forbidden to enter the holiest sanctuary. Neither did he have the
practical authority to punish the merchants, and by taking matters in his own hands, technically he did not follow the law. In that sense, I think the OP has a point.
