Acts 2:37-41

     I hope no one RSS feeds my blog, because I have a habit of constantly going back and editing my posts, and re-editing my posts, and then re-editing them again (that's a lot of notifications of updates).  I think this is yet another reason why I hate writing papers.  It's hard to get past the first paragraph because I wouldn't be able to be fully satisfied with it  And then, after all that editing I take it to the professor who writes all over it and tells me it's wrong. 😑  Truly, I should be more compassionate towards my students.  If they're at all like me with their editing tendencies I would totally shatter their universe.  That should be my motto:  Shattering students for 15 years, and counting.


     Back to Acts.  Today's reading comes from Acts 2:37-41.  At this rate I'm seriously never going to make it to Chapter 3.  I don't think I'm going to do any intertextual stuff today, but I did read some things that NT Wright covered in his book, which were somewhat encouragements.  Wright starts off this section talking about someone who is going down a steep hill and is going so fast that they can't stop.¹  Sometimes this can be dangerous (Wright was talking about sledding down a hill, and heading straight towards a cliff).  In times like these the only thing that can stop them is this sheer force (like a wall) to help keep them from plunging down further.  On a side note, this metaphor made me think of the time I was in Mexico with the missions team, and we went hiking one morning up on the hill (our campground was in a valley).  As we were coming down I was running down the hill, and I realized that I wasn't able to stop.  So I remember running downhill going, "I can't stop!  I can't stop!  I can't stop!"  My friend Kit got in my way, stood still, pivots his leg, and just grabs me.  We all made it down the hill in one piece, thankfully.  Our time and hike up that hill was a really memorable moment.

     Anyways, the point of Wright's story is to say that this describes the projection of those who are living in evil and corruption.  They are headed towards a cliff, and their eventual downfall is destruction.  The people who heard Peter's sermon seemed to recognize this need for repentance when they say in v. 37, "What should we do?"  This, by the way, also echoes or alludes to Luke 3:10, where the listeners to John the Baptist ask the same question when John calls them to repentance.

     Another side note.  One of my favorite philosophers is my former professor, John Hare.  It's been a long time since I've read him, but out of all of my professors he's one who has made the biggest impact in my life.  In my classes now I play a debate between him and Peter Singer, where they discuss the question of whether God is necessary for morality.  One of the points that Hare makes in this debate is the argument of God's governance.  He says the following:

God has organized the world in such a way that our morality and our happiness can be consistent with each other... How can I trust that the moral life and my happiness can be consistent with each other, so that I don't have to do what's morally wrong in order to be happy?

If I don't have that trust, then the commitment to the moral life becomes rationally unstable, because our experience of the world is one in which those two good things, morality and happiness, come apart. The most that we can justify by enlightened self-interest is being fairly good - at least, when other people are looking.  But morality requires unconditional commitment to the impartial point of view, or the point of view of the universe... 

...[Without this hope that God governs the universe], the moral life would not be worthwhile. The same thing can be found in my father's work², who talks about the governance of the universe, about people like Hitler coming to a bad end.  He quotes from Psalm 75:3, where God says, in the translation from the Book of Common Prayer which my father loved, "The earth is weak and all of the inhabiters thereof; I bear the pillars of it." 

So this is a basic trust in the governance of the universe that I'm talking about, that the good is more fundamental in it than the evil, and that good will, in the end, prevail. As Martin Luther King Jr. said: "I still believe that one day humankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed.  We shall overcome."³

I spoke last night of hoping that we really do have salvation from the corruption around us (especially religious corruption).  I think one of Hare's reasons here for the belief in God is to say that we do.  Peter in Acts testifies exactly to this when he says that Jesus, who took on the height of evil itself, has ensured that we can be saved.  According to Wright's commentary, the corrupt are like the ones falling faster and faster down the hill and are headed towards the cliff.  The only thing that can stop them and break their momentum is the strong foundation of Jesus. "'Salvation' is therefore pointing towards a very concrete and particular reality in the future... 'Salvation' regularly refers constantly, not in the least in Luke and Acts, to specific acts of 'rescue' within the present life: being 'saved' from this potential disaster, here and now."⁴

     Most days I'm sure my faith is only hanging on by a thread.  But there's a really stubborn part of me that just hangs on, and won't let go to the hope of this kind of salvation.


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(1) Wright, NT. Acts for Everyone: Part I. Westminster John Knox Press (2008): 40.
(2) John Hare's father is utilitarian philosopher RM Hare.
(3) Hare, John & Peter Singer. "Moral Mammals: Does Atheism or Theism Provide the Best Foundation for Human Worth and Morality?" A Place for Truth. Dallas Willard, Ed. InterVarsity Press (2010): 178-180.  The debate is also available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU7sqi8iBBI
(4) Wright, 43.