Jesus Uses Coercion.

Christ Driving the Merchants from the Temple, 1650, canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris.










“And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.” Matthew 21:12

According to the closing chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, this action taken by Jesus was one of the key events that led the chief priests of the temple to look for ways to get rid of this thorn in their side and eventually led to his crucifixion. Robert Greenleaf discussed this event in his essay "Coercion, Manipulation, and Persuasion" that appears in the book On Becoming A Servant Leader.

When Jesus drove the moneychangers out of the temple, he provided, for people who want or need it, theological sanction for coercion. But he did more than that. By that act, in his terms, he quickly purified the temple. But in doing so, he affirmed the stigma of profaneness on money, which persists to this day in such epithets as “filthy lucre” and “money is the root of all evil.” What if he had chosen instead to persuade them to bring their practices within the embrace of the sacred? It might not have had much effect on the simple economy of his day, but in our times, enmeshed as we are in a vast, complex, money-dominated culture, it could make the difference between survival and disaster. If he had had only limited success, the world might now be different - and better - if he had chosen, in that one single instance, to persuade rather than to coerce. But if he had chosen persuasion, the account of it might not be in the record. Persuasion is usually too undramatic to be newsworthy, and Jesus did not live long enough for the persuasive approach to have a noticeable effect. So much of history deals with coercion because it is rapid, conspicuous, and dramatic and its consequences are so often horrendous. Significant instances of persuasion may be known to only one or a few, and they are rarely noted in history.

If Jesus had used persuasion rather then coercion, would people around the world be celebrating Easter this week?