Mess with the customs of God’s people and someone will get hurt!    

 (Acts 6:8-15 & 7:55-60)

There is a steady, predictable progression from what is seen in Acts 6.9b-10 (These men began to argue with Stephen, 10. but they could not stand up against his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke.)  to the behavior recorded in Acts 7.57 (At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him). That recorded progression of behavior is common to mob-think and mob behavior.

We understand that mentality, on some level, as we view the French Revolution and, perhaps, as we look at the instigation of the mobs under the guise of The Sons of Liberty during the 1760’s and 1770’s in the American Colonies.

It’s more difficult to believe that kind of behavior is common among ‘God-fearing’ folks…but it is. The mass of humanity has evidently always been prone to exhibit ‘right’ by the use of ‘might.’ Reason has often been overpowered by voices of hysteria.

The demand is for something simple and clearly delineated…a theology affirming that “it’s either right or it’s wrong!” It’s black or white! Sin is sin! If it was wrong for our forefathers, it’s wrong for us!

Anything other than that is threatening to our traditions, our sense of what we are and who we are, and therefore our sense of moral superiority and justification.

That was what Jesus faced from the religious people of his day. It was the same thing Stephen faced from the religious people on the day of his death…his was a message that was incompatible with their unified and uniform message of law and that threatened their sense of moral superiority and justification. His was a message of Grace and Liberty.

It was a message of forgiveness and encouragement, of peace and reconciliation with God through the Gift of Jesus. It was a happy message – The Good News: the Gospel! It was the message of angels, and of the common man. It was the “eu angelion” – The Evangel about Immanuel: God with us!

But Stephen’s message didn’t fit their singular view of God. They had no allowance for God to be anything other than Wrath and Judgment. Theirs was a simple message and it’s always easier to rally masses around a perceived threat than it is a possible benefit.

Stephen painted a picture of the many faceted Love and Grace of God. I understand that I don’t understand the dialectic, the multi-facets of God. There is a dynamic tension on this string pulled between the poles of 

Many people/ churches/ denominations have decided to divide the polemics for their own ease of understanding and acceptance rather than accepting that God is not to be reconciled to the cubbyholes of our human philosophies. To try and accept the dynamic tension on all the lines of God’s relationship with mankind is more than most people seem to be wired to accept…as one man told me, “That gives me a headache. Just tell me what is sin and what isn’t.” 

There is the whole counsel of scripture to be considered. We prefer to paint certain pictures of God in order to reaffirm and justify our chosen arguments concerning The Holy. To include those snapshots of God which are not explainable within the parameters of our preferred ideologies would require flexibility in our dogmas.

We tend toward simple divisions of beliefs. We want crisp, clear differences between us, along with those who are like us and those who aren’t like us. Then we want the assurances and affirmations that we are “right.” This necessitates a positive certainty in our belief systems and dogmas. To include anything not explainable in our terms of rigid certainty would be to invite doubt or at least questions about the continuity and consistency of our belief system.

We therefore tend to have some difficulty reconciling portions of the Bible with our belief system because we have westernized the message first revealed in and to a Middle Eastern society.

Our western civilization Christian fundamentalism has now been one-upped by a Middle Eastern fundamentalism. Actually, their view of God and His demands for societal holiness isn’t much different from the views espoused by the Old Testament prophets. That’s really not central to the theme of this discussion. What is central is the vast difference in how Muslim existentialism and Christian existentialism plays out in the reality of our societies. They live and die their belief system. We codify and justify our belief system but rarely really put Christ’s actual teachings into play in our lives and society.

We really don’t understand anyone willing to actually die for what they believe.

The clash of ideologies involves such things as their view of theocracy without regard to nationalism or nation’s boundaries. Our view tends toward a Christian nationalism with patriotism being promoted with revivalistic fervor. Many Christian leaders in our country are calling folks to rally ‘round the flag and defend our “national values.” Many churches and ministers are proverbially and almost literally wrapping themselves with the flag, even with flags in the church auditoriums and patriotic anthems sung in “worship.”

On every side there are strident voices calling the multitudes to a simple and uniform message. It isn’t difficult to effect transformation of individuals into mobs – because it is easy to present a perceived threat.

Not much has changed since that day when the mob was stirred up against Stephen. He was only trying to wait on tables of widows and orphans and aliens…he was killed because what he testified to wasn’t reflective of the kind of ‘god’ that mob of religious folk believed in.

Not much has changed since that day. God hasn’t changed…humanity is still determined to be ‘right’ even if they have to kill people to prove it.