Counselors are familiar with the concept of resistance. Basically, it is some kind of a refusal to be helped, a rejection of the very person or process that could help him get out of the doldrums. While getting around it or working through it is very difficult, both counselor and counselee would be well advised not to disregard it, if progress is to be made.
The "Parable of the Tenants" (Mark 12:1-12) reminds me precisely of this — our natural tendency to bite the hand that feeds us, and to refuse or reject that which precisely we need to grow. The Jewish leaders then were no exception to this. They saw the great deeds that Jesus was doing. They were aware of the signs He was performing. They were conscious of the fact that crowds were following Him everywhere. But seeing is not acknowledging. Knowing does not necessarily lead to accepting; and not even great and wondrous deeds are enough to convince people who have already decided not to believe.
We know what this is about. It is all about emotion affecting cognition. It is all about bias affecting objective thinking. This is also a desire to protect one’s turf and maintain the status quo, preventing one from acknowledging objective truth that often stares us in the face.
It is also known as confirmation bias. All it takes is to decide in favor of a position, and one sees everything as proof for that position, including the very things that objectively disproves one’s position. It is plain and simple rejection!
This is what the Jewish leaders did. This, too, is what we do when it comes to difficult and what we refer to as “contentious” and “debatable” topics that affect us very deeply. But while Jesus was rejected wholely and entirely by the leaders of the Jews then, we do it now more in style. We don’t flatly reject the Lord. We just reject or refuse facets of His teachings, or bite the holy hand that feeds us. Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB
