Occasionally you hear discussions about how different the early church was. Some people envy the disciples that got to walk with Jesus, and learn directly from Him. Others have no wish to be anything like the people in the early church, on the grounds that they were one step removed from primitive superstition. I think the correct attitude is somewhere in between.
I have to admit, there is a certain appeal to the idea of having been able to walk with Jesus, but, even though there are Old Testament prophecies that indicate that He would be a light unto the Gentiles, for the most part, He didn’t deal with us during His lifetime. There was the Gentile woman that asked Jesus to heal her daughter, and He did, but not before referring to her as a dog. She had faith enough to be willing to accept being a dog, in His eyes, if He was willing to grant her no more than what a dog could gain just by sitting under the Master’s table. He had what she needed, and if she had to endure a little bit of name-calling to get it, then so be it. To be honest, as a Gentile living in Israel, she had probably been called a lot worse. The point is, I’m not ethnically Jewish, so I don’t think that Jesus would not have let me hang out with Him during His ministry.
On the other hand, some people seem to think that they are so much smarter than the people in the early church. Well, you know they just didn’t understand this, or they hadn’t been taught that. Maybe not, but these are the people that God chose to spread the Gospel. Do you really think that God called them, and didn’t qualify them? Everything that we know about Jesus, we know because these faithful men wrote it down. Is there anything that we really know about Jesus that we didn’t learn from the Bible?
Some people also seem to think that people today are more moral than the people in the early church. Certainly a case could be made for the fact that in Biblical times arranged marriages were the rule (from what I understand, people were generally married at age 13). Usually when I hear talk like that, they make it sound like there were a bunch of dirty old men marrying 13 year old girls, which I don’t doubt happened, but, normally families wanting to ensure that their sons and daughters were taken care of would arrange for them to be married while both were 13. Certainly nowhere in the New Testament is there a commandment for arranged marriages. Some would say that the writers didn’t feel that it was necessary to specify, since the practice was so common. Maybe so, but the fact remains that there is no such commandment. Keep in mind also that, with regards to 13 year old girls, there really was no such thing in Biblical times: A 13 year-old was considered an adult; it isn’t so much a shift in morality as it is a change in the understanding of what constitutes an adult.
I think it’s interesting too that some people talk about declining morals in today’s society. I suspect that it has less to do with what people think or feel as it does just people getting to be less hypocritical. Are the people of 2008 less moral than the people of 1958? Somehow, I doubt it, but I do think that people today are less likely to be inhibited by social standards than the people of the 50’s were. I don’t think that it was even a question of did they sin less, I think it was more a question of how careful were they not to get caught. Perhaps it was more a question of what sins did they commit.
Quite frankly, I don’t think that we are any smarter, or any more (or less) moral then the original disciples of Jesus. Yes, sometimes we have to filter what was written, because society has changed. It seems to me, though, that people are still very much the same. Like it or not, we are the early church.
I have to admit, there is a certain appeal to the idea of having been able to walk with Jesus, but, even though there are Old Testament prophecies that indicate that He would be a light unto the Gentiles, for the most part, He didn’t deal with us during His lifetime. There was the Gentile woman that asked Jesus to heal her daughter, and He did, but not before referring to her as a dog. She had faith enough to be willing to accept being a dog, in His eyes, if He was willing to grant her no more than what a dog could gain just by sitting under the Master’s table. He had what she needed, and if she had to endure a little bit of name-calling to get it, then so be it. To be honest, as a Gentile living in Israel, she had probably been called a lot worse. The point is, I’m not ethnically Jewish, so I don’t think that Jesus would not have let me hang out with Him during His ministry.
On the other hand, some people seem to think that they are so much smarter than the people in the early church. Well, you know they just didn’t understand this, or they hadn’t been taught that. Maybe not, but these are the people that God chose to spread the Gospel. Do you really think that God called them, and didn’t qualify them? Everything that we know about Jesus, we know because these faithful men wrote it down. Is there anything that we really know about Jesus that we didn’t learn from the Bible?
Some people also seem to think that people today are more moral than the people in the early church. Certainly a case could be made for the fact that in Biblical times arranged marriages were the rule (from what I understand, people were generally married at age 13). Usually when I hear talk like that, they make it sound like there were a bunch of dirty old men marrying 13 year old girls, which I don’t doubt happened, but, normally families wanting to ensure that their sons and daughters were taken care of would arrange for them to be married while both were 13. Certainly nowhere in the New Testament is there a commandment for arranged marriages. Some would say that the writers didn’t feel that it was necessary to specify, since the practice was so common. Maybe so, but the fact remains that there is no such commandment. Keep in mind also that, with regards to 13 year old girls, there really was no such thing in Biblical times: A 13 year-old was considered an adult; it isn’t so much a shift in morality as it is a change in the understanding of what constitutes an adult.
I think it’s interesting too that some people talk about declining morals in today’s society. I suspect that it has less to do with what people think or feel as it does just people getting to be less hypocritical. Are the people of 2008 less moral than the people of 1958? Somehow, I doubt it, but I do think that people today are less likely to be inhibited by social standards than the people of the 50’s were. I don’t think that it was even a question of did they sin less, I think it was more a question of how careful were they not to get caught. Perhaps it was more a question of what sins did they commit.
Quite frankly, I don’t think that we are any smarter, or any more (or less) moral then the original disciples of Jesus. Yes, sometimes we have to filter what was written, because society has changed. It seems to me, though, that people are still very much the same. Like it or not, we are the early church.
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