In recent years I realized that I look at the Acts of the Apostles from a Christian mindset. What is it like to look at the facts from the perspective of a Jewish believer, or even a Gentile who believed in many deities? From this perspective, I see how much courage it took to accept a new way of thinking.
First, I ask what an ordinary Jewish man or woman might be thinking. How would that complicate following Jesus?
If I were a Jewish person 2000 years ago…
Most likely my life would have been hard.
Life was grinding, with a triple tax burden: to Rome, to Herod the Great and to the temple (to which, traditionally, they owed 10 percent of the harvest).
The center of my life would be the belief in being blessed as God’s chosen people.
Most likely I had clear and strongly held core beliefs. I would be proud that I had a set of directions directly from God embodied in the 10 commandments
My major religious celebrations from my earliest days would be centered around the temple and ritual meal of the feast of Passover, the equivalent of Independence Day.
I would be longing for a Messiah, certainly, but one clearly like Moses and probably with overtones of political liberation from the oppression by foreign powers.
I would believe that non-Jews were unclean atheists and morally deficient, certainly not to be associated with.
Along comes Jesus and his followers
Jesus and his followers shook all that up. They presented radically new ways of thinking for both Jewish persons and non-Jewish persons.
For a Jewish person Jesus saying love your God and your neighbor as yourself” would make sense. But then Jesus said , “this is my commandment… wash one another’s feet!” Wasn’t that something servants did?
“We have always done it this way!” This Jesus was also telling them to forget the old way and celebrate a new Passover in memory of him. Think about that one. It was like a pastor telling Christians that Christmas is not about the birth of Jesus but about celebrating the memory of the pastor!
On the other hand, pious Gentiles (they had many deities they believed in) were challenged by the Jewish beliefs of the early followers of Jesus. So much of Jesus teaching seemed rooted in a Jewish way of looking at things. They were hearing that Jewish strict dietary rules and other things were essential.
The clash of these mindsets presents a formula for polarization.
How do I react today when someone challenges my deeply held beliefs?
The big picture of the Acts of the Apostles is this clash of mindsets. We tend to think all was resolved quickly. Far from it! It took the better part of two centuries of struggle to work it out.
I suggest it will be worthwhile looking at the Acts of the Apostles as early Jews and Gentiles struggled with mindsets other than their own. What were the essential values in each mindset?
In many ways, the stories in Acts offer keys to understanding the last century of our own history of a struggle for church renewal from Vatican II to Pope Francis. Pope John XXIII set in motion a process not unlike what we see in the Acts of the Apostles. What are the traditional values that need to be held on to and what needs to be rethought?
Contemporary clash of mindsets
- What is my predominant mindset toward Church renewal?
- What values do I need to appreciate more?
Click below to listen to an audio version of this Vincentian Mindwalk.
Father, thank you for these recurring insights into a life of faith.
As a child, emboldened by the First Sacraments and Catholic education systems, I couldn’t conceive how those early disciples couldn’t see what was before their eyes. As an adult enduring many examples of situations turning sour or events going awry did I come to appreciate that *any* of those early believers were able to change their mindset.
It is still a daily struggle, reminding myself that God loves me and the people around me so much but still doesn’t take away the pain, anxiety or confusion that seems so much at the heart of where we are in this life.
We have not yet been able to embrace the Easter that the Christian world is now celebrating, but we look forward to reuniting with family and friends in the life to come when that day finally comes to pass.
Thanks for shifting our focus from our own encumbrances to the great hope that the Resurrection brings.
Godspeed, Father John!
What I see to be one essential value in the Jewish tradition is justice or righteousness. Even what one ordinarily considers “charity” (and act of good will that is prompted by generosity) is a matter of justice in Jewish tradition (tzedakah). Such justice makes for solidarity.
And what I see to be a fundamental value among Gentiles is the one I read about in Acts 17, 22-23, namely, their being very religious.
I may brand such religiousness as religiosity (unthinking, fanatical, exaggerated), but they can open up to the true religion, the living faith, the poor have. There is much to be said for it and the “folk Catholicism” that I’m quite familiar with in the Philippines even if it seems sometimes that it borders on superstition.
The above- mentioned values are among those that I need to appreciate more.
As for the question of what is my predominant mindset toward Church renewal, I’d say it is the readiness to relieve human suffering that Jesus embodies. It’s born of compassion caught from the Father and shows, among other things, his deep respect for the inalienable worth and dignity of the human person.
Indeed, “he went about doing good” in behalf of those he identifies with and calls the least of his brothers and sisters.
This is, of course, the Jesus that St. Vincent especially mirrors. Of the latter Delarue says, “There was no wretchedness of age which he did not try to alleviate.”
I notice in Acts 9 and 10 that the story of the conversion of Cornelius is presented twice. Interesting. The focus is on the work of the Holy Spirit. Maybe listening to what God is doing each day among us is the way to move forward in conversion.