Indignation over monuments to historical figures is beginning to turn into a kind of blind hysteria. In America, the Confederate dead, former Supreme Court justices, Christopher Columbus, and even the 19th-century physician known as the “father of gynecology” are all in the crosshairs. In Germany, some have called for removing statues of Martin Luther because of his anti-Semitism. Implicit in all this is a certain naiveté and presumption: if we had been around back then, we would not have committed those offenses. Jesus' words to the scribes and Pharisees, however, is a remedy for that kind of self-righteous, simplistic thinking.
The scribes and Pharisees, the religious elite of first-century Judaism, believed themselves the heirs of righteous forefathers. Jesus speaks directly to this presumption:
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