This request is directed mainly at my nonESR friends, although I'll take advice and comments from anyone. I'm working on an team exegesis project, focused on Acts 16:16-24, and I need to say something about how my religious community interprets the passage and how it affects their understanding of Christianity.
Well, religious community. That's a sticky phrase. I don't think I'm going to have much luck with 'relatively progressive yet rabidly evangelical pentacostal' as a search term on ATLA, so I've decided to define my religious community as 'people I know.' I'm taking the passage into the Roadhouse and making friends there give me opinions, emailing folks from Pentecostal circles back home, and... asking for erudite commentary from y'all.
So, even if your response is something like 'gosh, Paul sounds like a jerk,' or 'oh, that's how Paul and Silas ended up in jail,' or 'stories that wierd should really be moved to 2 Chronicles where nobody will notice them,' leave them in the comments.
If your comment is extra special, you might get a footnote in the paper. Then, you'll have the distinct pleasure of knowing that my professor is aware of your awesomeness.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
My grandpa (a Wesleyan missionary) used to tell me that if the devil wants you to believe a lie, he'll make it as close to the truth as possible. Okay, maybe that's not exactly what's happening here, but the father of lies can get creative and use the actual truth sometimes, too. It's like when someone is telling a joke that you've heard before, and you ruin it for everyone else by shouting out the punchline before she finishes. Sure, you just said the same thing that she was going to say eventually, but no one's going to laugh without the buildup. I think some of the devil's best work is done by people who, on the surface, seem to be professing Christianity, but they make the idea so unpalatable in their delivery that they do more damage than good. (cf. shooting abortion doctors in defense of life.)
So, I think that Paul was doing what he could to save his ministry, because there was something in this girl's delivery (perhaps a cultural joke that we don't get anymore) that was severely damaging his witness. Not to mention the fact that she was possessed. Sure, her fortune telling was making money for her owners, but Paul was a forward-thinking guy (occasionally). He didn't see her as simply property to be exploited, he saw her as a human being who was suffering. So, he freed her from the spirit, which, no matter how much money it made for her employers, was bound to be a little bit uncomfortable for her.
I find it interesting, however, that the slave owners don't go to the authorities with the real story. I wonder if they could have been in just as much trouble for exploiting an evil spirit as Paul for sending it out? Or maybe they just knew that they could play the Jew card more easily. It's interesting to me, too, that their charge against Paul is so similar to the charges against Christ. I can almost picture the slave owners saying, as the chief priests in John 19:15, "We have no king but Caesar." Those Bible bad guys sure knew how to play their Roman rulers.
I'm really tired and have a lot of yummy food in my stomach. I'll preface my comment with the fact that, in college, Jill and I used to love reading the Bible as if it were a book about life, and enjoying the funnier parts.
To some extent, I like to look at this passage as God being able to work through even the annoyed frustration of Paul. Maybe that's skewed, but it's an angle that appeals to me. Paul gets fed up, casts out the demon, and everybody wins, at least on the surface: the girl, Paul, and God. Her owners and the demon don't make out so well.
That's my surface-y initial response. I need sleep now.
Post a Comment