The "Unsustainable" Church of Acts 4?

St Barnabas, who "laid money at the apostles' feet"

At the end of the fourth chapter of the book of Acts, after Peter and John have made their first defense before the Sanhedrin (and probably anticipated that that same fate will befall them that overtook their master) comes a famous description of the living arrangements of the early church.

Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no-one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.

Socialism! Or, at least, a lot of ink has been spilt trying to prove that it wasn't.  Perhaps this was only a temporary arrangement, while the church was getting itself started, some sort of sign; or (for some writers) perhaps it was actually a sign of financial irresponsibility, a prematurely realized eschatology which ultimately led to the need for St Paul to organize the "collection for the saints at Jerusalem" which so preoccupies him in the later part of Acts and several of his letters (e.g. 2 Corinthians).  But this kind of critique has to be read back into the text; there is nothing in Acts 4 (or in the subsequent story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5) that suggests that Luke is taking some kind of critical distance from the behavior he describes.  This is just the way it was, he seems to say, and maybe the way the true church should be.

Are You Working Hard Enough To Maintain Your Elite Status?

That was the subject line of an email that I received as we were returning from the hospital the other day.  Background: The sender was the frequent-flyer miles program of the airline that I usually fly with.  Last year, which included a wonderful vacation in New Zealand with Liane as well as other personal and business trips, had promoted me to the lowest named tier ("silver") of their frequent-flyer program. This year, with all kinds of travel curtailed by loss and cancer, somehow it looked like I wouldn't make the grade.  What a failure! Shouldn't I be getting out there and flying more?  Look, here are some special offers!

It's a basic assumption of this kind of advertising that, if you slice your customer base into various levels ("silver", "gold", "platinum" and the rest), then people will grasp for the higher status levels - however meaningless they may acknowledge that the whole exercise is.  Something about the idea that "I am inside the elite group and you are outside" feels tremendously appealing.  Let's take a moment to acknowledge that it is also completely un-Christian.  As Paul writes,

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)

We are called to imitate Jesus in repudiating the whole grasping business.  We could ask one another how well we are doing at getting rid of our elite status so as to serve others more effectively.  One hopeful example seems to be the author J.K. Rowling

This news is a few years old (see here) but I only came across it today and found it an encouraging antidote to "Airline X"'s trying to convince me to worry about my "status" in their dumb frequent-flyer program. 

Mike Pence and Causality

Governor Mike Pence of Indiana has been in the news since his selection as Donald Trump's vice-presidential nominee.  Of course, this means that some of his more surprising statements over the years have suddenly found themselves highlighted.  For instance, "Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn't kill."

Memories IX: A Step over the Void

Skyline Traverse is a Seneca Rocks classic, described in the old guidebook as "one of the finest routes of its grade".  The author then continues, however, "The start of the second pitch has filled the hearts of many beginning climbers with fear".  When you arrive there, it is not hard to see why, especially if (as the "beginning climber") you are the second person on the rope.

Are You Receiving Me?

Justin Lee

Our child Eli loved to dream big.  Several times over the years, he and I dreamed together about putting on some kind of event - perhaps a mini-conference - in State College that would highlight the call for the Christian church to be fully inclusive of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, as well as the many gifts that our LGBTQ siblings have to offer the church.  This call, we believed and still believe, is one that issues from the heart of the gospel and is also one that many Christians are longing to hear (whatever may be the 'official line' of the churches to which they belong).

Can "Moral Foundations" Be Criticized?

You've probably heard about moral foundations theory, which is described in detail in Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind.  Simply put, this theory suggests that human moral judgments are points in a higher-dimensional space: we don't just evaluate actions or policies along a "good/bad" axis but along several different axes such as "care/harm", "fairness/cheating", "liberty/oppression", "purity/disgust", "authority/subversion" and so on.  These axes (okay, I know that a high-dimensional space does not come with a preferred coordinate system, but bear with me) are referred to as "moral foundations".

It's been suggested further that the cultural-ideological fissures evident at least in American society are tied to the relative weighting of these moral foundations: "progressives", it is said, prioritize the Care and  Fairness foundations almost exclusively, whereas "conservatives" give the other foundations equal weight with these two.  I find this helpful in terms of understanding the different ways in which people think.

Exclusion and Embrace

A few posts ago I was sharing some of the themes that are, or have become, prominent on Points of Inflection - among them, faith-based commitment to creation care, support for the LGBTQ community, and dealing with cancer which has recurred since my treatment in 2014.  Though these seem quite a disjointed collection of ideas, I believe that as I live through them and their implications, I'm going to find connections and intersections.  In talking friends recently, I've come to feel that one important connection is this question: where exactly is the boundary of the beloved community?