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"I have to admit that for most of my life, or at least as far back as I can remember, there has been a word, or more often a phrase, almost constant in my vocabulary (spoken or unspoken). It pops into my head when someone cuts me off in traffic, when someone is rude to me or another person, or when someone's words or actions are oddly out of order from what to me is normal, decent behavior. It doesn't necessarily mean the person is a bad person. It refers to a person who is acting badly-selfish, inconsiderate, disrespectful, mean-spirited, vindictive, using coarse language, or even just acting silly-and I think, What a Jerk! The definition of the word jerk in the New Oxford American Dictionary is ""a contemptibly obnoxious person with its root in the idea of a person who is jerking someone around or who deals with others dishonestly or unfairly.""[i] As a person who regularly probes the Bible as a source of guidance and truth for my life, I enjoy digging into certain topics to see what Scripture has to say about issues pertaining to my life and the world around me. Not surprisingly, when I looked, I could not find the word jerk in any translation of the Bible. What I did find was an interesting word that is one of the few Greek words many of the major Bible translations don't bother to translate: Raca. While reading through the gospels, on numerous occasions the above-mentioned phrase has popped into my head: What a jerk! Feeling my face flush with embarrassment, I move on. For the thought was not always directed toward the words and behavior of the Pharisees who through their hypocrisy sought to trap Jesus, or to the Jewish people who turned away from Jesus, or to the dim disciples who would regularly miss the point of a particular teaching from Jesus, but for the words and actions of Jesus himself! Wait a minute! Did I just call Jesus a jerk? Even as I'm thinking it I can feel the wrath of all Christendom bearing down on me. But, what would you call a religious leader who would purposefully ignore someone desperately seeking help for their tormented child? A person who then sides with his friends, agreeing that the mother is annoying and needs to be sent away? Not only that, but he is openly bigoted, mocking her with a racist slur. What? I'll let you come up with the appropriate descriptor for a religious leader who behaves so hypocritically. So, I ask what many in His day asked of Jesus, ""Who can this be?"""

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