Matthew 21:13 (NLT) reads, He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves!” Hmmm. And so Jesus did what? The loving, forgiving, and merciful Christos did what? Mark 11:17 and Luke 19:46 echo the same story. But, it’s the Gospel of John that makes this even more improbable for me.
Not only does John put the event at the beginning whereas the Synoptic Gospels put it at the end, but John makes it seem even worse as John 2:14-15 reads, “And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated. And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the moneychangers, and overturned their tables.”
Come on! I can’t see Jesus whipping people and being UN-Jesus-LIKE? Such intellectual STULIFICATION I can’t accept.
I’ve always had a problem with this verse so let me tell you where I currently have landed.
Paul holds a key for me. Paul was writing when the second Temple was still standing and he reminds us that WE are the TEMPLE (I Cor. 3:16 and I cor. 6:19 as examples). We are a house of prayer- each of us! Have we forgotten that the Old Testament and Leviticus as an example were full of sacrificial lessons and laws. Have we forgotten that it was LEGAL to sell those doves that Jesus was upset about and angry? How would the people’s sins be forgiven without those sacrifices?
It’s a metaphor!
But the church has turned it into a MACHO JESUS proof-text. The church the story, the metaphor, into an excuse for righteous indignation, wars, Crusades, and Inquisitions- IN THE NAME OF JESUS of course! I’m taking the high road here. The moral of the story for me is that I need to drive out the OLD VIEW of an external sacrifice and bring in the NEW VIEW that the Kingdom of God is within me (Luke 17:21) and I need to be radical in driving out all that keeps this spiritual temple from being just that!
Get my drift Cliff? 
It takes time to travel somewhere whether by plane or car or whatever, but love always meets its object inatantaneously, it does’t take any time to get to you.So if your striving or struggling just be still and know that I am love.Its the best cure to the law and you don’t have to go anywwhere to get it,it,s within, just be still.
“I can’t see Jesus whipping people and being UN-Jesus-LIKE?”
I love this!
What really messed with me was reading a little of the gnostic gospel, “Infancy Gospel of Thomas”, where the child Jesus is quite the scourge of the town in cursing his teacher into serious infirmity and other very upsetting things. It is written out to be as if Jesus was always doing very harsh, impulsive and controversial things around town and his father, Joseph, was always having to clean up his messes with the townspeople. Not so meek and mild and definitely not the perfect, cry-proof baby in the manger.