Spiritual Hiccups - The Church and The Bible

Today's reading in Acts describes the beginnings of the Church. "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people."

I'm struck by these descriptions and how different they sound from most Christian congregations I've seen.  First, there is a serious, intense commitment, not the casual Christianity so often seen today.  Second, there is a sense of power in this Church.  There are "wonders and signs" done by the apostles, not to mention all the members having received the Holy Spirit.  And this has evoked a general sense of awe among the entire population.  All this has turned the Church into such a distinctive and different sort of community that it produces "the goodwill of all the people."  Sometimes the mission work of the modern Church impresses those outside the Church, but too often the Church is viewed with contempt and disgust by outsiders because of our petty squabbles, the way we often mirror the worst of our society, and our general failure to be the community of love we are called to be.

Strangely enough, I think a great deal of this harks back to the way we have come to read the Bible.  When we read the Bible primarily as a collection of information, it often becomes the source of division and contention.  How we access this information and how we interpret it become the dividing lines between denominations and theological traditions.  What we believe after reading the Bible compared to what they believe form boundaries that separate us and them.  And naturally those who don't believe the Bible in the first place are completely on the outside.

In the end, being a Christian often becomes mostly a matter of what one believes.  Certainly what one believes is important.  Those first Christians clearly believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead.  But I would argue that what made the Church in Acts so different was not so much what they believed but the power of God that they experienced in their midst.  And now we've come back around to a blog from few days earlier where I mention this quote.  "People come to us looking for and experience of God and we give them information about God."

I'm not sure if our informational reading of the Bible is symptom or cause.  But I'm not sure it really matters when it comes to fixing the problem.  When we begin to read the Bible more spiritually, seeking to meet God there rather than learn certain facts, that cannot help but change our notions of what it means to be Christian. 

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