Is it real? Or is it just a text?
When I read the first sermon Peter preaches in Acts and imagine the results that followed (around 3000 people respond to the invitation to turn their lives around and enter a new way of life) I am enchanted. To me, even as a "Westerner" I find the description following this verse idyllic: everyone sold what they had and pooled their resources so needs among the people could be met. Everyone enjoyed the common meal together. They had everything in common. Unlike some who find this description repugnant, I long for this type of fellowship and "others" focus. Why? Perhaps it's because I have found--within the larger body of our own church--a smaller circle of fellow Christ-followers with whom I "do life". That is to say, I can imagine this type of collective living with them in our circle.
Maybe this causes me to romanticize the potential for this type of arrangement in a larger context. Maybe, despite my formal training as a neoclassical economist, I am a socialist. Maybe I am a dreamer. Maybe I have the text all wrong. Maybe (and I am fairly certain I have heard a sermon or two along these lines) this description is only a text describing the ancient church in its infancy because they had no building, no formal mechanism for gathering so they met in homes and had all in common just while they organized themselves. Maybe this is not supposed to be a description of anything real that could exist in the church today.
But, the older I get the less inclined I am to accept the latter view. Letting go of our own possessions, thinking and living within a community experience versus an individual experience is radical by American/Western standards and is often maligned by conservative values. What is so ironic about this? I am, by nature, conservative philosophically.
So, is it real? Or is it just a text?
Am I willing to sell all I have to find out?
Created about 1 year ago
