Tag Archives: diversity

Unity, Not Uniformity

26 Replies

A while back I wrote about the diversity in the church in the first century. I was reading Acts 21 yesterday and was struck again by this story. There’s an idea out there that the early church was fairly Jewish in nature, but that it outgrew that characteristic.

Passages like Acts 21 show that idea to be untrue. Here we are years after Pentecost, years after the “Jerusalem council” of Acts 15, yet James describes the Jerusalem church by saying, “You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law.” (Acts 21:20) Then he says to Paul: “Then everybody will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law.” (Acts 21:24)

James not only thinks that many in Jerusalem are living according to the Law, but he feels that Paul is doing so as well. And Paul never corrects him. Instead, Paul agrees to participate in a Jewish vow to show his dedication to the Law.

In the past, I asked one brother on this blog what freedom Paul was talking about in Galatians 5:1 [“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)] That brother said it was Judaism. That makes no sense, given that the Galatians weren’t Jews before they became Christians. And this incident in Acts 21 happened years after the letter to the Galatians was written.

There’s no doubt about it. The early church was much more tolerant of diversity than the modern church often is. It’s an area we need to grow in.

Focused worship

4 Replies

[Another old bulletin article… I’ll get back to fresh writing soon…]

I’m not really into poetry. I’m often frustrated by my lack of culture, my lack of appreciation of many of the “finer things.” I don’t particularly care for opera, nor ballet nor classical music. And I don’t read poetry.

When we had to read poetry in school, it was the rare poet who really appealed to me. One that did, however, was Robert Burns. And one of his poems that stands out in my mind is one called “To A Louse,” with the subtitle “On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church.” The poem addresses a louse which is crawling around on the head of a young lady. The real point of the poem, however, is the vanity of the young lady. She, noticing the looks and pointing directed her way, vainly thinks they are admiring her and begins to toss her hair. The last stanza, in modern English (Burns wrote in Scottish), says:

O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
And even devotion!

It’s a brilliant thought, and I could certainly do worse than write an article on this idea. Yet my thoughts are turned a different direction. I’m wondering how many of us would play the part of Mr. Burns in that church service, focusing our attention on the young lady in front of us and the people all around us, rather than focusing on the worship we profess to perform. How many times have we come away thinking about Jenny (the name of the girl in the poem) and her louse, rather than our Lord and His sacrifice.

I remember numerous times in Sunday School when, following a prayer, one of the children would announce: “Mrs. Davis, Bradley didn’t have his eyes closed.” This would lead to the inevitable question of course: “How do you know?” It never seemed to dawn on us children that spying on one another during the prayer was worse than not closing your eyes! (And, of course, you couldn’t close your eyes and still spy, so you were guilty of the same offense as the accused).

It’s easy to laugh at such things in children. It’s much harder to laugh at them in adults. In fact, it makes me want to cry from frustration at times.
“He raised his hands!”
“She tapped her foot!”
“He didn’t sing!”
“She sang too loud!”
and the list goes on and on.

It makes me want to reply: “How do you know?” Before you answer, let me help you with the answer: you know because you weren’t focused on God. “Well, she distracted me.” Is that her problem or yours? If you are truly focused, you don’t get distracted that easily.

I can see it in myself. There are many times when I can’t even tell you what the person next to me was doing during the service. Those are the times I was focused on God. There are other times when I’m watching the passing of the communion trays, when I’m seeing if Brother So-and-So is here, when I’m worried about the sound or the air conditioning, and I realize that God does not have my full attention.

Not to criticize Mr. Burns, but I wonder just how concentrated he was in his worship to notice the louse, to follow its movements for several minutes, to notice the reactions of those around him, to watch Jenny toss her hair, etc. If I were in his place at that moment, I would take a moment and apologize to God for my disrespect to him.
Maybe we could rewrite the poem a bit:

O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves, not those around us!

Nothing good is said in the Bible of those who critically observe the worship of others (think Michal and David!). Much good is said of those who strive to worship God in Spirit and in truth.

Don’t let the lice distract you. Fix your eyes on things above. Concentrate on your worship. Because, in the final day, whose worship is God going to ask you about: yours or those around you? Will He praise us for having spotted the errors in those around us or rebuke us for neglecting Him while spying on our brothers? I’d rather not find out.

Diversity in the church

1 Reply

I used to think that there was strong uniformity from congregation to congregation within the church in the first century. Doesn’t everyone speak of “the first-century church”? I imagined a consistency of faith and practice from place to place.

If you hold that idea, let me point you to the oldest group of Christians in the world, the church in Jerusalem. This was the church that for years was led by the apostles themselves. James, the Lord’s brother, was a prominent leader in this church. The Jerusalem church was made up, in the beginning, of educated Jews, people who knew the Old Testament Scriptures well. They had a leg up on those who were new to the Word of God.

When Paul visits the church in Acts chapter 21, the church had been in existence for over 30 years. So it’s almost surprising to read this description: “Then they said to Paul: “You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law.” (Acts 21:20) The Jews who were being converted in Jerusalem, thousands of them, remained zealous for the Law of Moses. We can see that they continued worshiping in the temple, did purification rites and seemingly continued to sacrifice.

What would you expect the apostle Paul to do? Hadn’t he written this to the Galatians: “You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.” (Galatians 5:4)? Paul is not shy about correcting error. He is not one to do things just to get along. When faced with this congregation where vast numbers are still practicing Judaism and the leaders are allowing it, what does Paul do? He also allows it and participates in their Jewish worship. Reminds us of what he said in 1 Corinthians 9: “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law.” (1 Corinthians 9:20-21)

What was wrong for the Galatians was right for the Judeans. What would have been an attempt to seek justification via the Law by one group was not that for the other. The differences between the groups would have been vast. The differences between Paul’s actions among one group and the other would have been vast.

Cookie-cutter Christianity is a modern invention. In the first-century, Christians were allowed to have widely varying practices. I guess their tolerance level was higher than ours.

A church we would recognize

Leave a reply

Since I’m teaching a course at ACU this semester, I attended a pre-session for the College of Biblical Studies. Jack Reese, dean of the college, mentioned that one board member asked him if twenty-five years from now there will still exist a church of Christ that we would recognize.
With my keen ability to explore tangents (i.e., my mind wanders), I began thinking about this question: Would someone from the first century recognize our church? The answer that quickly came to mind was: Of course not.
“What?!” I shrieked at that intruding thought (fortunately, it was an inaudible shriek). “How can you say that?”
Being a rational thought, it calmly explained to me that there was little about our church that would be familiar to someone from the first century. All of our standard trappings would be unfamiliar to them: songbooks, pews, pulpits, communion tables…. Buildings themselves would be a novelty. Bibles! They had no such thing. Communion trays. Offering baskets. All of it new.
I could go on, but you probably see that this thought of mine had a point. However, relentless thought that it was, it didn’t stop there. It also proceeded to point out that this time-traveling Christian would probably come to see that, in the things that really matter, our faith was the same as his.
Which gave me an opportunity to return to what Dr. Reese was talking about. Made me hope that, whatever changes we may see in the next 25 years, we may come to the same conclusion. In the things that really matter, it’s still the same faith.