This week, I’m sending out my first edition of Scripture Journals. I was reading through Acts this week, so the first edition consists of some thoughts from Acts 17.
Paul and Silas have caused trouble all over the world," they shouted, "and now they are here disturbing our city, too... They are all guilty of treason against Caesar, for they profess allegiance to another King, named Jesus.
Acts 17:6-7 NLT
The text: a summary
In Acts 17 we find Paul and Silas on their second missionary journey, this time stopping to preach in Thessalonica. The Lord used their preaching to convert both Jews and Gentiles, and this angered some other Jews who weren't persuaded by their preaching. A riot broke out and these Jews decided to take the matter before the city council to see how Paul, Silas, and the other believers involved could be punished.
Parallels to our day
I laughed out loud when I read this earlier this week because it reminds me of the "controversy" surrounding "Christian Nationalism." I'm immensely simplifying the distinction here, but basically, we have two groups.
One group takes Christ's command to make disciples of the nations (Matthew 28:19) rather literally, meaning that we should expect our nation to actually be Christian if we are doing our jobs right as the Church. There's a lot out there about how terrible Christian Nationalism is, but I think this is all it really means, especially to the ears of your average Bible believing and politically conservative church goer. On the other hand, at least broadly speaking, one of the most common criticisms of those warm to the idea of Christian Nationalism is that they want to subvert democracy and install a theocracy. Again, I'm really simplifying the details for the purpose of this discussion. There are arguments in favor of both sides of this and there is a lot of nuance, but this is how I see it boiling down at the most basic level. Either way, I see an interesting relation to the discussion here in Acts.
The preaching of Paul and Silas is of course spiritual in nature. Recognizing and confessing Jesus as the Messiah produced revolutionary change in the lives of their audience. It does the same thing for us today. But what we must grasp is that the change produced by the Lordship of Christ is not only spiritual. It changes everything. Here, it threatened the power that many Jews held. It's interesting to note why the Jewish leaders here tried to get Rome involved. The Life Application Study Bible notes are helpful here:
The Romans did not care about theological disagreements between the Jews and these preachers. Treason, however, was a serious offense in the Roman empire. Paul and Silas were not advocating rebellion against Roman law, but their loyalty to another king sounded suspicious.
The truth is that confessing Jesus as Lord and acknowledging His kingship is supposed to be suspicious to any form of government that views itself as the ultimate authority. If Jesus is Lord, that means Caesar is not. If Jesus is King, that means democracy is not. In this instance, Romans did not care about the Jews' religion because it wasn't a threat to their empire. Anyone professing allegiance to another king, however, was indeed a threat. In the same way for us today, religion or faith that limits itself to "spiritual things" is not a threat to the secular empire or the status quo.
I cited this passage from the New Living Translation, but I like how the Christian Standard Bible refers to Paul and Silas: "These men who have turned the world upside down have come here, too." (Acts 17:6)
It's worth asking ourselves if the message we preach gets us a reputation of turning the world upside down.