I Was a Teenage Sadducee

Yes, the title is a little cheesy, ok, a lot cheesy, and presently I will get to the how and why but first some historical perspective.

The Sadducees, mentioned in the gospels, were regarded the smallest by some historians of five social groups in Palestine during the early first century. The Pharisees, Zealots, Essenes, and Gentiles/Pagans make up the other divisions. Though small in number, they were the real power in the region. (If one does not consider how they were under the thumb and discretion of the Roman occupation.) The Sadducees controlled the Temple – the place of worship. Additionally 60 plus seats of the 70 member Sanhedrin legislative court were controlled by the Sadducees. Thus, they had both the political and religious systems under their authority and control.

Today they would be considered conservative in their politics, religion, and manner of life. They took the Torah literally, “if it was good enough for Moses” might have been the response to those who brought in the Psalms or Prophets. They believed that God had not revealed himself in any writings after Moses. They certainly did not accept the oral traditions of their rival Pharisees.


The strictness of their faith did not necessarily carry over to daily life; for the Sadducees were Hellenistic. They had accepted the Greek way of life with its emphases on the physical and intellect. An extra-Biblical account relates that once the Temple could not be opened for evening prayers due to the priest and workers all being at the gymnasium watching the wrestling matches. There world-view was certainly more Greek than Hebrew. Finally they were more prosperous by rule and used their position in society to curry favor from the occupying Romans.

Growing up in a some what fundamentalist church, I became fluent in most Bible stories and dispensational doctrines, by Jr. High, due to a well-organized and structured Sunday school and Jr. Church program. The church was fairly large, I suppose, for the early 60’s as we had two classes for each grade level, divided boys and girls. The dozen or so fellows in my class had been together since diapers.

Occasionally we would have a substitute teacher, obliviously pulled at the last minute from an adult Bible class. By Jr. High we had several well-developed routines for these well-meaning but unprepared sacrificial lambs…er…I mean volunteers.

The Sunday school superintendent must have had a standard pitch on what to teach while walking the “fresh-meat” down the corridor to our classroom. “Just ask them who or what their favorite Bible story or character is and go from there.” Since they all began that way, we knew our parts perfectly. Though we would improvise with each new encounter, the pattern was the same.

After hearing the usual and expected: Moses, David and Goliath, Noah and the flood, the feeding of the Five Thousand, either I or my pal David would say our favorite was either the Philistines or the Sadducees depending whether we wanted to go New or Old Testament. Subtly we would hook the teacher and reel him in. Of course, they simply wanted to get through the hour and also be a nice guy and that added to the tangled mess we could create.


We actually knew a little about either group – definitely more than any adult who had been conned or guilt-tripped into having a go with us.
As mentioned above, the Sadducees, as the ruling elite of society, the Temple and Sanhedrin held both religious power and political control in their hands. They had deftly separated the religious duty from every day activities. The Sadducees in practice did not let their religion interfere with the important stuff – like making money, gaining popularity, and controlling others.

Yes, I need someday to repent from my pleasure of tying the tongues of our substitutes as we became excited to also exert power over the congregation, have wealth, and find favor with political leaders just like the leaders of our church. We knew enough and were smooth enough of speech to twist scripture and make the Sadducees ones to be followed.

But more importantly is the repentance for also separating my life into compartments isolating my walk of faith from my interactions with those I rubbed shoulders with every day. Little did I realize that I was doing that in High School (and through most of my adult life). What we had said in juvenile jest had become the reality of my life. At school I was just a good kid who never got into trouble but a little like Ferris Buller knew and for a price could arrange things for you..

Two days prior to graduation from High School our schools tradition was to have a catered dinner for all of the seniors. No underclassmen or alumni were allowed. Additionally, the custom was upheld for that one evening that couples did not relate in that exclusive manner typically of High School. On this one amazing night social walls came down and everyone and anyone talked and hung out. It was surreal, almost mystical. Later that evening, after the meal, I found myself at a home with 20 or so of my classmates, none whom I had ever really hung-out with before.

Sitting in an alcove, away from the party, five fellows engaged in conversation. Two I sot of knew since we had been school friends back in seventh grade, and the other two I had had classes with during the three high school years and had “helped” with various school matters. Joe, who was literally “the big-man on campus”, began to tell us how he had come to know Jesus Christ as his personal savior two weeks before at some youth revival.

He was excited to be sharing with us his new faith and wanted us to know Jesus also. And to my surprise the fellow next to me said he was also a Christian and regularly went to a particular Baptist Church. I still remember the look on Joe’s face, something between surprise and disappointment. Well to bring the story to a close, each of us in turn admitted we knew Jesus and were involved in various youth groups. Not only involved, but each of us was considered a leader. Our conversations lead us to apologize to Joe and later to each other as we realized that we had missed the opportunity to live in community with each other as Christian brothers.