David Anguish
On its face, it is the most astounding of stories. An itinerant preacher, who never traveled outside his insignificant homeland and whose capital case barely caused a ripple at the time, gave a mission to a small group of cowering followers who had thought their dream had ended. These twelve men, supported by only about a hundred others, emerged from hiding and launched a movement which has changed the world from that day to this. An Empire which tried to destroy them eventually embraced their faith as its official religion. That Empire has long since fallen; that faith continues.
In a statement I love because of how it crystallizes what occurred, T. R. Glover explains how it was done. "The Christian," he wrote, "proclaimed a war of religion in which there shall be no compromise and no peace, till Christ is Lord of all;...How was it done? If I may invent or adapt three words, the Christian 'outlived' the pagan, 'outdid' him, and 'out-thought' him." Turning specifically to how they "out-thought" the world, Glover observes that, "from the very start every Christian had to know and understand, he had to read the Gospels; he had to be able to give reason for his faith..." (The Jesus of History, 213, 217, in Jerry Gross, "The Religious Revolt Against Reason," The Southeastern Evangelist, Vol. 7, No. 8 [August 1978], p. 2).
The significance of this statement is evident in a discovery I made a few years ago while researching a class on world religions. Looking for some background on the development of varios religions, I read of a worldwide religios upheaval in the sixth century B.C. which changed the religious landscape and led to the development of five basic approaches to God, or religion types. Every world religion which has ever existed -- at that time or since -- may be characterized as either ritualism (fulfillment by performing the right ritual), atheism (fulfillment by doing what makes you happy), asceticism (fulfillment by losing or suppressing all desire), ethicism (fulfillment by doing the right things), or monism (fulfillment by union with the Absolute Reality [sometimes also called mysticism]). (See Robert Brow, "Origins of Religion," Eerdman's Handbook to the World Religions, pp. 30-48.)
First century Christianity, which is really a sixth way (fulfillment by grace through faith), met every one of these religion types. Think about what we see as we study Acts. There was Judaism, in both its native Hebrew and Hellenized forms (Acts 2, 3, 6, 8, 13). There were the moralists who nonetheless needed God (Acts 10). There were the pagans who worshiped and served other gods, including varios deities associated with cults (Acts 14, 16, 19). There were those who knew something of Jesus, but not enough (Acts 18:24-19;7). There were those who perverted the gospel into a legalized blend of Judaism and Christianity (Acts 15). There were the philosophers who held divergent views and whose skepticism caused them to question everything (Acts 17;16-34).
What does this information teach us as we face a world with so many challenges and choices? First, we see again that it was expected that Christians would not be content to just proclaim their message, but that their proclamation would declare reasons for believing it. Second, we understand that we need not despair over recent challenges. Our grandparents may not have directly faced monism, or even that much atheism. Thus, our recent history may not offer us much by way of training to encounter the world ours has become with all its "new" choices and challenges. But Paul faced such a world. So did Peter, James and John. The record of their response can equip us for the good work of meeting a similar world today (cf. 2 Timothy 3;16-17). But only if we are committed to preparing for "a war of religion in which there shall be no compromise or peace till Christ is Lord of all."