Fri. Aug. 22nd :: Acts 21 :: Sometimes it’s Never Enough

When they heard this, they praised God. Then they said to Paul: "You see,
brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are
zealous for the law. They have been informed that you teach all the Jews
who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to
circumcise their children or live according to our customs. What shall we do?
They will certainly hear that you have come, so do what we tell you. There
are four men with us who have made a vow. Take these men, join in their
purification rites and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads
shaved. Then everyone will know there is no truth in these reports about you,
but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law. As for the Gentile
believers, we have written to them our decision that they should abstain from
food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and
from sexual immorality." The next day Paul took the men and purified himself
along with them. Then he went to the temple to give notice of the date when
the days of purification would end and the offering would be made for each of
them.

(Acts 21.20-26)

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If you didn’t read through all of this, here are the cliff notes:

Some fellow Christians come to Paul and tell him that he needs to reassure the Jewish believers that he is still authentically Jewish. (In political terms, he needs to firm up his ‘base’). He needs to show off his Jewishness by going to the temple, taking a Nazarite vow, and (what’s more!) footing the bill for some other dudes to do the same.

So in an effort to bring unity, Paul does all this. Or at least he tries.

What happens after vs. 26 is interesting to me. After jumping through the religious hoops to bring unity, Paul is attacked at the temple by an angry Jewish mob and beaten so badly that only a group of Roman soldiers step in to spare his life.

End of cliff notes.

Now in the past I’ve heard this passage preached—somewhat out of context—to prove that it’s a good thing for Christians to take vows and go through special spiritual rituals to dedicate themselves to God. And indeed there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just not the point of the passage.

One of points of the passage—in its context—seems to be that sometimes (no matter what you do to bring unity) conflict will come. Sometimes it's never enough. You can try to make everyone happy (at work, at church, in your family, etc…) but sooner or later reality is going to kick you in the face like it did to Paul in the temple courts. Conflict comes for all of us. And when it does, the important thing is how we deal with it. We shouldn’t go looking for conflict, but we shouldn’t expect to entirely avoid it either. It’s coming. And anyone who asserts that the absence of conflict denotes good leadership never read the book of Acts. It’s that simple.

So how did Paul handle this conflict?

The answer comes in the way Paul responds to the angry mob. But we don’t get that till chapter 22.

To be continued…