gnats

156:2.8Je­sus greatly en­joyed the keen sense of hu­mor which these gen­tiles ex­hib­ited. It was the sense of hu­mor dis­played by No­rana, the Syr­ian woman, as well as her great and per­sis­tent faith, that so touched the Mas­ter’s heart and ap­pealed to his mercy. Je­sus greatly re­gret­ted that his peo­ple—the Jews—were so lack­ing in hu­mor. He once said to Thomas: “My peo­ple take them­selves too se­ri­ously; they are just about de­void of an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of hu­mor. The bur­den­some re­li­gion of the Phar­isees could never have had ori­gin among a peo­ple with a sense of hu­mor. They also lack con­sis­tency; they strain at gnats and swal­low camels.”

185:0.4Al­though these Jews were not at all both­ered in con­science as they in­trigued to ef­fect the ju­di­cial mur­der of Je­sus, they were nonethe­less scrupu­lous re­gard­ing all these mat­ters of cer­e­mo­nial clean­ness and tra­di­tional reg­u­lar­ity. And these Jews have not been the only ones to fail in the rec­og­ni­tion of high and holy obli­ga­tions of a di­vine na­ture while giv­ing metic­u­lous at­ten­tion to things of tri­fling im­por­tance to hu­man wel­fare in both time and eter­nity.

175:1.17“Woe upon you, scribes and Phar­isees and all other hyp­ocrites who make sure that they tithe mint, anise, and cumin and at the same time dis­re­gard the weight­ier mat­ters of the law—faith, mercy, and judg­ment! Within rea­son, the one you ought to have done but not to have left the other un­done. You are truly blind guides and dumb teach­ers; you strain out the gnat and swal­low the camel.