I've been continuing to learn about the early church. I've made it now to the 2nd century. It strikes me both how the broader culture viewed Christians and how Christians viewed themselves and the broader culture.
It reminds me in some ways of the church today. Some people embracing philosophies of broader culture, others pulling back and separating themselves from thinkers of the day.
Worship of Roman gods and the emperor took up a significant portion of people's disposable time and so Christians generally lived very differently from those around them. Because of this, they received a great deal of criticism from the popular culture and from this arose the first apologists who wrote the first, ancient version of "The case for Christ."
Many of the themes in today's culture wars were brought up - but I had to chuckle a bit when I read that there was a conspiracy theory about Christians eating babies by hiding them in a giant loaf of bread as part of "eating the blood and flesh of Christ" during the sharing of Communion. Perhaps the idea of eating babies is just one of those things that triggers people in just the right way to discredit a group as despicable. At any rate, that particular lie was part of 2nd century Roman culture wars.
There were other elements that rhymed with today - educated elite vs common class, racism, appropriation of philosophical traditions in the way that best suited ones world view. I could almost imagine Twitter wars between these early writers, both Christian and secular.
This period pushed people to look deeply at faith and seek God's wisdom in navigating the tide of ideas. And I think God was with them and helped them as they began to formulate Christian theology. As they tried to articulate who Jesus was, what Jesus did and what that means for humankind. This is a monumental task for those of us who have the new testament and many many books of theology passed down through the ages. These early theologians had letters, the Greek book of Jewish scripture, each other and the Holy Spirit.
God worked among them unexpectedly. Ideas that formed our faith have come from every type of unexpected source. Scholars and slaves. Insiders and outsiders. Secular and Jewish. God worked in and among them, because of and despite them.
I think it is human nature to find confirmation of our beliefs as we read history. I want to be proven right and wise. I want to be the protagonist. And most importantly, I want there to be a clear directive from the past that will help me take strong action be on the "right" side of history in the present.
Matters of faith deal with those most important questions - right and wrong, is there a God? What does that God expect of me? What happens when I die? Why am I here? What does it mean to live life well?
Jesus came and taught about the kingdom of heaven. He did miracles and was executed by the establishment for his dangerous teachings. He didn't stay dead. His band of uneducated disciples carried on his work and his teachings and his story spread throughout the Roman Empire. His followers were persecuted by Jewish leaders, then by the Roman state. Culture wars ensued. Christians thought hard about their faith and tried to articulate it. They wrote books to explain it.
But they also LIVED it. They cared for each other and the poor and sick. The rumor about eating babies came from the fact that Christians regularly took in abandoned babies when no one else would. They lived lives as a response to faith and if it came to it, they laid down their lives in response to faith.
May I also live as a response to faith. As I seek to know and experience and try to understand God, may that shape who I am. May it change me, fully. May I have courage to go wherever that may lead me and may I have the tender heart to speak in a way that shines more light into the world reflecting back the beautiful gift of grace that God has given to me.
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