Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Contrasting Acts 2
One of life's greater curiosities to me has been the contrast between the massive amount of the Pentateuch devoted to private property and the rights thereof, and this brief passage in Acts 2:
So many questions - Is Christianity "communist" in some fashion? Why such a huge break between the Old and New Testament? I thought God more consistent than that?
I have not pondered this imponderable for quite a while, as an adult I entered the mainstream of American commercial life and decided that that small passage in Acts was some sort of historical aberration and moved on. All these questions returned to my consciousness when I read this post at Kruse Kronicle. It quotes at length David S. Landes from his book, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor This is the part that really caught my eye:
I draw from these observations two lessons, and they are familiar ones to my readers. One, our personal and individual transformation is the key to achieving the ideal. Unless and until a sufficient number of our country are sufficiently transformed to voluntarily join a community like Acts 2, heck just a community without abortion would be good, to force such is oppressive and wrong, and in the end, un-Christian.
The second lesson is the terrible corruptibility of the church. It falls to each of us that are a part to fight that corruption on a daily basis, first in ourselves, and then in our congregations. We live in an age where the church does not, cannot, shape the truth for us as it could in the days prior to the Reformation. And yet, so many of us take church at face value.
We are the church, we need to act like it.
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Acts 2:43-47 - And everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. And all those who had believed were together, and had all things in common; and they {began} selling their property and possessions, and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need. And day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.Such a idyllic description of Christian community, and yet so...communist. (Please remember, I am an old fart - communism is a big deal)
So many questions - Is Christianity "communist" in some fashion? Why such a huge break between the Old and New Testament? I thought God more consistent than that?
I have not pondered this imponderable for quite a while, as an adult I entered the mainstream of American commercial life and decided that that small passage in Acts was some sort of historical aberration and moved on. All these questions returned to my consciousness when I read this post at Kruse Kronicle. It quotes at length David S. Landes from his book, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor This is the part that really caught my eye:
The concept of property rights went back to biblical times and was transmitted and transformed by Christian teaching. The Hebrew hostility to autocracy, even their own, was formed in Egypt and the desert: was there ever a more stiff-necked people?And all at once the word "FREEDOM" clicked through my mind. Communism was oppressively enforced (been there, seen it, it is ugly) while the Acts 2 community was voluntary. The Acts 2 community was small and in the context of the greater whole of the Roman Empire, it was not of itself empirical. Communism relies on the quite corruptible, and corrupt state, while the Acts 2 community relied on the transformed heart and Spirit-filled lives of the participants.
[...]
This tradition, which set the Israelites apart from any of the kingdoms around and surely did much to earn them the hostility of nearby rulers – who needs such troublemakers? – tended to get lost in Christianity when that community of faith became a church, especially once that Church became the official, privileged religion of an autocratic empire. One cannot well bite the hand that funds. Besides, the word was not getting out, for the Church early decided that only qualified people, certain clerics for example, should know the Bible. The Good Book, with its egalitarian laws and morals, its prophetic rebukes of power and exaltation of the humble, invited indiscipline among the faithful and misunderstanding with the secular authorities. Only after censorship and edulcoration could it be communicated to the laity.
I draw from these observations two lessons, and they are familiar ones to my readers. One, our personal and individual transformation is the key to achieving the ideal. Unless and until a sufficient number of our country are sufficiently transformed to voluntarily join a community like Acts 2, heck just a community without abortion would be good, to force such is oppressive and wrong, and in the end, un-Christian.
The second lesson is the terrible corruptibility of the church. It falls to each of us that are a part to fight that corruption on a daily basis, first in ourselves, and then in our congregations. We live in an age where the church does not, cannot, shape the truth for us as it could in the days prior to the Reformation. And yet, so many of us take church at face value.
We are the church, we need to act like it.
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