Acts 24; Value

Paul said twice that his driving force was the resurrection. Verse 15, "and I have the same hope in God as these men themselves have, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked." Verse 21, "It is concerning the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you today.” I don't think we really grasp that. We admire Paul's life but rarely embrace his motivation.

I think that today we treat the resurrection more like an insurance policy, i.e., it is something I want to have a guarantee for but really don't want to use because using it means tragedy has struck. We tend to live focused on the here and now so much that we come to believe this is real life. However, if I truly believe in the resurrection, consumerism becomes a stupid way to live. If I think the next life is the best life, am I really going to be so concerned with external looks, popularity and fame now? Maybe the litmus test is this: do I think about the resurrection when I purchase something? If a thing, any "thing", is only a decaying object for brief use in a temporary life, how much value can it really have? How much time, care and work does it deserve?

If the resurrection is birth into the real life and not just insurance in case there might be more, then people -- and only people -- become valuable because only people are resurrected into the life that goes on and on. It would seem the key to living Christ-like and Paul-like is to remember that fact. Every thing becomes a tool to build relationships; every wrong committed against a person becomes more significant. Treating people like objects of the temporary world -- judging people by what they do rather than who they are, treating people as sexual items for my pleasure, being too busy to notice people -- becomes absurd.

So now, how absurd is our North American consumeristic culture? And how utterly absurd to claim to follow the resurrected One and sill cling to the objects of this world? Shame on us -- shame on me -- for when we live like everyone else who confuse the value of people with the value of the temporary.

Acts 22; Race

The crowd was fine as long as Paul was a good Jew. He talked about his education and heart with no problem. He described himself as a mystic hearing voices and seeing lights others could not and still there was no problem. He described himself as a mercenary (a.k.a. terrorist if you are on the receiving end) and still everyone was on board. They could accept anything as long as it did not involve reaching out to gentiles.

Fast forward 2000 years and hit play. Most Christians are pretty good at accepting just about any education level -- from self taught to Ph.D. We might wince but I think most people do pretty good with mystics; at least the general view is that they are somewhere within the kingdom though most are not sure where and certainly don't want to sit too close to them. Most Christians in the USA have no problem supporting those who take the name of God as coverage for when they act preemptively in battle. So what draws a reaction today?

It probably varies depending upon which area of the country you live in. In my life, I grew up in a very racist area and never attended a congregation where there was an African-American member until I was at least 20. As a youth I watched a congregation fight over whether or not to evangelize a certain side of town. I was given all sorts of strange arguments that were just ethnocentrism cloaked in Bible. I thought those days were gone in our country until a few weeks ago when I overheard two men going off on Hispanics. Same arguments, same feelings, just different people group. In fact, same feelings as the people had around Paul, just different people group then also.

It is amazingly difficult for us to see past a layer of epithelium (skin) and cultural behavior to realize that the soul of each of us was created in the image of God. To see people in the image of the Creator and then choose to reject them is to reject the image of God. No one wants to be guilty of rejecting God and so we fabricate all sorts of reasons for why some people are really not people. Amazing. If we could just accept the little lesson from Genesis 1-2 (God created us all in his image), what a different world and church this would be.

Luke 16:1-15; people or possession

People or possessions -- which is my focus? That is what this passage seems to ask me. Even dishonest people are called shrewd or wise if they know their priorities. Money is made to be used, not loved. People are made to be loved, not used. Somehow we get this all swapped around in our world. In fact, Jesus said just that. What men value, God despises.

We value the creation over the creator, money over men, possessions over people. But God knows that only he and his people will last; everything else, money included is dust in the wind.

So what do I value? What do I really shape my life around? What drives me and controls my decisions? How highly do I value people?

Schweitzer was right, "One thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve."