Just Thinking on a Wednesday

For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements:  that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality.  If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.  – Acts 15:28-29

We have to say, So Long, to George Beverly Shea, who was 104.  We will miss that powerful voice.  

Jesus is a Jewish Messiah.  His disciples were all Jews.  His mother was a Jew.  Everybody present on the Day of Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was a Jew.  There were no Gentile believers for years.  Even those to whom Peter first preached at the home of Cornelius, though technically Gentiles, were adherents of Judaism and followers of the ceremonial law of Moses.  Nobody was dragging drunken Spartan pedophiles down to the creek for a Sunday afternoon baptizin’. 

Basically the thought was that in order to be a believer in the Jewish Messiah, one needed to be a Jew, and it kind of makes sense if you think about it.   I am sure it seemed perfectly reasonable to the leadership in Jerusalem.  But as more and more Greeks and other non-Jews came into the Church, the apostles began to realize that God’s Spirit was not quite as particular as they were about who was being saved.  The revelation God gave to Paul and others who were preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles was that all that ceremonial law typified the spiritual reality that was now accessible in Christ and through the Holy Spirit.  It was like a play that God’s chosen people acted out day after day, year after year in anticipation of the Incarnation and the Cross.  Once Jesus came, finished His work, and poured out the Spirit upon “all flesh”, as Joel had prophesied, the ceremonial law still spoke of Christ as present reality, but, it no longer represented the way of salvation. 

I look at the rules that came from that Jerusalem Council, and I see that God is mainly concerned that we put other people first and avoid offending those around us.  The Cross is an offense to the world system, but indiscretions and immoral behavior by Christians should not available to be used against us.  I can go to a Baptist or a Pentecostal church because I don’t drink or smoke or use drugs.  I don’t smoke tobacco because it just never appealed to me – seemed like a waste of money and something else to carry around.  I don’t smoke dope anymore because I would never get anything done, and I always ate too much.  I don’t drink anymore because I woke up one morning and found out I had done a bunch of stuff I couldn’t (and still can’t) remember, and I decided, if I was going to miss the fun I might as well not have it.  I never cheated on my wife because I promised not to.  And I did all that without being a Christian. 

Christianity is not a rules-religion.  If we analyze the restrictions that came out of the Jerusalem Council it is to avoid participating in pagan religious practices and avoid encouraging those practices.  We should avoid doing things that our brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ might find disturbing.  The explicit example for the early Church had to do with eating blatantly non-kosher food.  Finally, they were to avoid sexual immorality – one translation says “whoredom”, but clearly anything outside of the legitimate marriage relationship was and is forbidden forever by the moral law, which also, of course, has nine additional restrictions so obvious there was no need to bring them up.  Anyone who kept within these relatively easy-going boundaries was a communicant. 

Modern Christians have a wide variety of practices, and we should be as tolerant as possible of some of those variations.  I see people, especially Christians, with tattoos, and I have to suppress a snarl.  Except for guys who have been in the military, no one has any business with ink in their skin.  Because of my past work experience, I see ink, I think "felon".  I am also offended by fat, lazy, out-of-shape preachers ranting at people about using tobacco.  Lewis and Tolkien smoked pipes – shoot, my old Baptist preacher smoked a pipe back in the ‘50s and ‘60s.  Conversely, I harass my daughter about smoking and my nephew about chewing for health reasons. 

How about cursing?  We shouldn’t do it, but we should always avoid offending people with our language regardless of the exact words we use.  We can kill people with our words and never say so much as a “tinker's damn”.  As far as taking the Lord’s name in vain, I’m with Leonard Cohen:  You say I took the Name in vain.  I don’t even know the Name.   I do try to avoid throwing the name “Jesus” around out of context, unless I’m talking to my network administrator down in Austin – say, Hey-Zeus.  Some Adventists – bless their little Sabbath-keepin’, vegetarian, cholesterol-free hearts -- and Mormons would probably be offended by my profligate consumption of coffee.  Anyone anxious for an express ticket to heaven can try switching me to decaf.

Peter, who ought to know, gives us some sound advice:  Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.  Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. (1 Peter 2:11-12)  We should live so that we are not in bondage to anything – yeah, probably not even caffeine, I’ll work on that – and so that we are able to maintain a solid witness to those around us.  We should live as cleanly and as honestly as possible.