Bob the Baptist Loves Jesus

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This past Sunday we went and visited a new church. For some years we have been attending Anglican Churches (not under the Church of England) which are strong in doctrine, history, and safe from out-there Christians who frequently confuse their thoughts with God’s or at least safe from being exposed to the blurting out of those thoughts in a service…yet in some ways as I appreciate the safety factor, something of the heart seems missing, for me. I miss congregational worship in song. I miss the time to wait before the Lord and hear Him speak to my heart. Hymns sung in the Anglican service, those written such a long time ago that we have retired from daily use a great deal of the words used in them, makes it hard for me to really get into it. I have used the analogy of reading Moby Dick to explain this feeling of mine about those hymns - many times I have tried to read Moby Dick as I have heard the literary value of it but I can’t get past the first two chapters. Moby Dick was published in 1851 and is acclaimed as a strongly philosophical work of fiction, yet it can’t touch my heart to read it because I can’t get into it. 

The church we visited yesterday had a strong relational message given by the Pastor with scriptural support. There were three songs at the beginning and one at the end in a darkened room, which isn’t my favorite vibe, but it’s what you get in a modern three-service-Sunday popular church and it was fine in that regard. The people who greeted us were very friendly and the experience was beneficial. 

Do we belong there? I don’t know. Which leads me to the initial motivation for this writing, Acts chapter 7. That may seem disconnected but hang in there with me.

If you want to read a condensed version of the calling of Abraham and the history of Israel’s creation which set the stage for the coming of the Messiah, Jesus, that’s the place to read it. If you also want to read about making religious people fuming mad, it is also the place to read. The Hellenistic Jews as well as the Sanhedrin were riled up and then became a mob against Stephen. 

In Chapter 7, Stephen relates the way God prepared for and then presented salvation for the world. He simultaneously explains human misunderstanding of the plan of God in subtle and not so subtle ways. It certainly doesn’t read like it was a smooth process. For example, if you buy something that needs assembly and you read the instructions and you follow the instructions, the process creates the product you expected. Pretty smooth, usually. But that is not the way it frequently is in walking a life through with God and it certainly wasn’t a smooth situation in the account from Abraham until Stephen’s speech.

In Acts 7 Stephen explains how Moses thought that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand when he killed the Egyptian (verse 25) but they did not understand this. It sent Moses into a delay of his calling and a time of wonderment. I can imagine that Moses felt very grand as a young man and apparently he had an idea of his importance, but by the time he got to the encounter with God in the burning bush on Mount Sinai, forty years had passed and we read of a less brash Moses. When Moses does bring the children of Israel out of Egypt, in verses 39-41 we read that the people went to Aaron (what WAS Aaron thinking?) and asked for a god they could see to go before them and then after they created it they “rejoiced in the work of their hands”. 

Mankind and the tendencies of human beings are troublesome to me in reading all these accounts. So what can we learn from this passage? At the end of Acts 7 we read that Stephen was stoned to death. 

Differences of opinion. Differences of expectations. Differences of interpretation. 

A few years ago I read a book, Beheading Hydra, which I thoroughly enjoyed regarding the concept of the book but within the book, written by a Catholic priest, Dwight Longnecker, was the following paragraph - 

“One Christian may well love Jesus more than another; however, it is patent nonsense that all Christian denominations are of equal value. Catholicism is far richer in every aspect: philosophy, spirituality, culture, art, architecture, history, and music. No matter what one’s prejudices are, it is historically and objectively true that Catholicism is the richest and fullest expression of Christianity. Bob the Baptist may very well be a good Christian man who loves Jesus, but his religion is a truncated and inferior form of Catholicism, from which it is derived”.

Really? REALLY! When I read that part I was determined to research the validity of his claims and did so and easily came up with a very different opinion of the start of Christianity and the supposed elevation of all things Roman culturally but that’s another article. This one is closing down to this thought of mine - 

How are we ever going to show the world that we are Christians by our love?