The Pharisee in the Pulpit: How Fijian Christianity Lost Sight of the Mirror
In many of our churches across Fiji, a peculiar faith is preached. It is a faith more concerned with the geography of Jerusalem than the geography of the human heart. It speaks more of a chosen people in a distant land than the divine spark in the person sitting next to you. Unknowingly, it has become more aligned with the Christianity of the Pharisees—whom Jesus condemned—than with the Christianity of Jesus Christ himself.
The central tenet of this modern Pharisaism is external validation. Where the historical Pharisees clung to strict adherence to Mosaic law as a sign of holiness, some expressions of Fijian Christianity; influenced by colonial and political Zionism, display a fervent focus on a physical Israel, future prophecies, and outward rituals. This faith is built on a foundation of otherness: the holy land is there, not here; salvation history happened then, not now; God’s chosen are them, not us.
This is a profound departure from the radical, unsettling message of Christ. It rebuilds the very walls of separation that His ministry sought to dismantle. The apostle Peter experienced a revelation that shattered this paradigm: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35). The early church concluded that the covenant was for all of humanity through faith. There are no exclusively ‘chosen people’; we are all God’s people.
When asked to name the greatest commandment, Jesus did not say, “Pledge allegiance to a foreign state.” He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart… and love your neighbour as yourself.” He insisted the entire law hangs on this. Everything else is commentary. This commandment is universal, directed at every human being, without exception.
The transformative power of Christ’s teaching is that it demands we stare into the mirror. “The kingdom of God is within you,” He said (Luke 17:21). It is not a remote destination to be visited, but a state of being—cultivated through compassion, humility, and justice, right where we are.
The colonial introduction of Christianity to Fiji often came with a Pharisee’s handbook. It taught us to externalize God—to see Him as a distant, white patriarch whose favour was earned by rejecting our own world, our Vanua, our ancestors. It was a theology of displacement, convincing us our sacredness was elsewhere, white and that we were secondary in a divine plan. How can this be? In doing so, it committed the error Jesus condemned: prioritizing external abstract ritual over “the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23).
The irony is profound: we venerate a man born in Bethlehem, who broke Sabbath laws to heal the sick and ate with sinners, yet we often practice a religion of exclusion, judgment, and meticulous outward observance that reinforces the very barriers He died to tear down.
True Christianity is not about looking to the Middle East for a sign of salvation; it is about looking into the eyes of your neighbour and seeing Christ. It is the recognition that Na Kalou na Vanua is not heresy but a profound truth—that the divine is immanent, present in this world, even right here in Fiji and within us. When God said, “Let us make mankind in our image,” He was describing a spiritual capacity for love and moral consciousness granted to all. God is a mirror of our highest being. To know God is to know ourselves truly and to choose love.
The challenge for Fijian Christianity is a choice: Will we continue down the path of the Pharisees, seeking holiness in external lands and rigid doctrines? Or will we embrace the liberating message of Christ himself—that there are no chosen people, only a chosen path: the path of love? The kingdom of God is within, demanding we see the divine in our own reflection and in all we meet.
Real Christianity is not an escape from the world, but a courageous engagement with it, beginning with the person in the mirror. It asks not, “Do you support the right nation?” but “Have you clothed the naked, fed the hungry, and loved the unlovable?” The answer—the state of our own hearts—is the only Zion that truly matters.
It is time for Fijian Christianity to have the courage to look squarely at its own reflection.
Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian 