On the next day, their rulers and elders and scribes were gathered together in Jerusalem; and Annas the high priest was there, and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of high-priestly descent. When they had placed them in the center, they began to inquire, "By what power, or in what name, have you done this?" (Acts 4:5-7 NASB)
I couldn't pass this up. This isn't the whole seventy of the Sanhedrin, but just the "upper crust" of the religious elite. While Pharisees make up part of the Sanhedrin, these are the wealthy Sadducees who differ significantly from their "brethren in the faith". One of those differences is in the belief that there will be no resurrection from the dead, a belief they support partly by limiting the Scriptures they hold sacred to the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures, those attributed to Moses. I'm not positive, but I think they traced their family lines to the Hasmonean's who were "priest-kings" in Judah between the Greek rule and Roman rule, the family who started and led the Maccabean revolt. Don't hold me to that, but I think so.
But these are also some of the ones who arrested Peter, John, and the formerly-lame-man in the first place. And it says they arrested them for speaking of the resurrection in the name of Jesus (see verse 2, or the previous entry in this blog). So, how is it that they don't know "...what power, or in what name" the lame man was healed? I suspect they just had heard, and wanted confirmation right from the source. But these guys face an enormous dilemma.
If they have what they suspect confirmed, then what do they with the fact of this healed man standing before them? They have reached one of those paradigm-destroying moments where closely held beliefs on which much of their lives had been founded are suddenly shown to be seriously flawed. The choice is to shift their paradigm to align with this clear new reality, or do something to conform the reality to their paradigm.
It seems that another limiting factor for them is the view of the people. The people outside these chambers, living normal lives filled with normal struggles for existence, were glorifying God because of the event. These leaders couldn't appear to be more obtuse than those they led. They'd loose their following. Yet they can't let go of their paradigm. It's truly a conundrum. And this is why their solution seems so "wimpy".
I see that I too need to hold lightly the paradigms I construct for myself. I need to construct them, because they form a framework to address my life circumstances. And I need to construct paradigms from Scripture, which keeps the reconstruction or renovations simpler. But the moment that the "framework" I use to understand Scripture becomes more important than the Scripture itself, I'm in real danger. I think I could learn a thing or two from my pastor about this. He seems able to adjust his paradigm to Scripture, and has several times, to hear him tell it. I consider that another of his remarkable and admirable qualities. I just wish it were more common in church in general.
When I read in Scripture something that does not work with my mental framework, I have a choice. I can either adjust my framework to accommodate the Scripture, or I can ignore or adjust what the Scripture says to make it fit my framework. I clearly need to be doing the first rather than the second. Here's one of the underlying problems though. Much of my framework is inherited from my childhood religious experience. At the time of my life when I least understood what was being said, I was forming a framework to understand the world around me. I basically borrowed pieces of the framework of others rather than forming one on Scripture myself. That's common, and it's not really the problem since I wasn't really able to form those constructs on my own then anyway. The problem is how I used those construct in my adult life.
Now, having adapted myself and my framework to my circumstances, I have found that much of what I learned I have used for my own gain. What I mean is that the wrong views of God, the Bible, what it means to be a follower of Jesus, and so on have been supported by the unsubstantiated paradigm. What I find is that as I push through Scripture, flaws in my paradigm show up and I am at this crisis of faith. Like the Sadducees, chief priests, scribes and so on, I am faced with something in Scripture that doesn't match my paradigm. Like them, I have comforted my wrong beliefs with this framework. Like them I have much invested personally in my wrong beliefs. And like them, I have an uncomfortable choice to make.
If you are looking for my paradigm re-alignment problem, just read tomorrow's entry. It will be on the character of the early Jerusalem believers. I have a lot invested in rejecting such an application of Scripture to my life. Cultural differences are my main excuse, but there are economic ones, differences in their particular situation in life, and so on. I can point to other examples where this attitude was not applied to other congregations. But I also know Scripture enough to know these excuses are more lame than the guy healed at the gate was. So what do I do? I get out my hammer and I start pulling nails from boards. I've got a point of view to adjust.
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