Twenty-first-century Sadducees

The Sadducees . . . say there is no resurrection.   Mark 12:18, NIV

There was one fundamental conviction buried deep in the mind of every Sadducee: there is no resurrection. This put them in dispute with the Pharisees, who believed wholeheartedly in a future resurrection. The Pharisees also believed in heaven and hell, but “the Sadducees say there is no resurrection or angels or spirits” (Acts 23:8).

A worldview is a set of beliefs through which we filter information. It’s like a software program running in the mind, and it helps us sort out what we receive as true and what we reject as false. And it’s not easy to change your worldview.

Once we’ve grasped a set of convictions, it’s difficult for us to hear anything to the contrary. At one time, people believed the earth was flat and the sun revolved around the earth, but when it was discovered that the earth is round and it rotates around the sun, it was difficult for people to unlearn old assumptions.

Notice the pattern in the Sadducees’ belief system—no resurrection, no angels, and no spirits. The Sadducees didn’t like anything that smacked of the supernatural. They didn’t buy any of it. As far as they were concerned, the only power available is the power inside of you. “You only live once,” they seem to say, “and don’t go looking to angels or spirits for help. That’s an emotional crutch for weak people to lean on. Life is what you make it.”

That was the Sadducees’ worldview, and if you were to take off a Sadducee’s robes, take away his scrolls, and take him out of the Temple; if you were to give him a job in the city, an Armani suit, and a cell phone, you’d have a picture of the twenty-first-century mind-set.

The twenty-first-century Sadducee worldview is clear: “Don’t look beyond the grave because that cannot be known, and don’t look to heaven because it’s all up to you.” Many of these modern Sadducees are in church, just as their first-century counterparts were in the Temple. They are good, upright, and successful people with sharp minds but blind spiritual eyes.

For further reading, see Acts 23