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We piously look at their fear and think we don't have that problem, but our actions and conversations betray us. Our prejudice toward people not of our denomination is a glaring example. And even within our own community our love and acceptance of those around us is based largely on their uniformity with ourselves. We are very reluctant to affirm anyone that has style significantly different than ours. If they don't have a similar level of implicit, blind, unreasoning dependence of SP as we do they are viewed at best with suspicion.
Affirmation of inherent value of others irrespective of their behavior is a concept that usually strikes us as heresy of a dangerous order. Conformity is valued as the most noble character trait and uniformity to our sub-culture in unquestioning obedience to a religious leader's teachings is considered godliness. We insist our children memorize the quotation, “It is the work of true education to develop this power, to train the youth to be thinkers, and not mere reflectors of other men's thought” (Ed. 17), but then subtly insist they give priority to reflecting our thoughts before they are taught (if ever) to think for themselves.
Saul did not fit in well to the apostles early church style. He was a very immature, highly enthusiastic believer, passionate about his new relationship to Jesus but rather abrasive in his presentation of his current understanding of the gospel. He had not spent the years with Jesus having his rough edges exposed and mellowed as they had done. He had experienced a radical conversion of grace, but had not yet become very graceful himself. He had always been immersed in the strong tradition that winning arguments is the sure sign of being right, and this notion still permeated his thinking as a new Christian. So with his keen, sharp mental prowess and his newly discovered insights and understandings of Scripture coupled with his unbridled passionate first love for his Saviour, he boldly launched into a campaign to convert all the Jews to Christianity not wholly unlike his previous campaign to do just the opposite.
In an interesting sense, Paul was acting like Moses when he killed the Egyptian and then had to flee for his life. Moses had caught a vision of his calling and moved to aunch into it decidedly and with gusto. But he had not learned important lessons about what God is like and how He relates to humans just as most of us have not. So too, Saul had to be sent away to incubate in the wilderness just like Moses to learn lessons of humility, grace, gentleness and true God-likeness before he could emerge as the highly efficient channel communicating God's grace as the apostle Paul that he later became.
So here is this enthusiastic ex-murderer running around town claiming to be a born-again Christian. And all the church establishment leaders suddenly are eclipsed in their level of commitment and consequently have their fears exposed again. Fear seems to always be the foundational problem for all our issues and dysfunctions. We have still not grown in maturity and trust in God to extinguish some deeper level of fear unknown to us previously.
So God creates for us a new dis-comfort zone to expose yet another unstable foundation of fear in our hearts as an opportunity to repent, confess and repair these foundations and fill up the breach with deeper revelations of truth about God Himself. (Isa. 58:12) It is primarily heart work that has to be accomplished, not doctrinal belief systems rearranged. Conforming our arrangement of facts to reflect the particular view of some religious group we ascribe to most often is a pious substitute for allowing true conviction of the real Holy Spirit to take root and break up the hard ground of our hardened, pain-filled hearts. We want to avoid real heart work at all costs because we know it will involve stirring up old buried pains and will challenge our pet beliefs and assumptions. In fact, our very identity will be threatened and subconsciously we are afraid that that will just kill us. So we hide our wounds under the camouflage of systematic theological arguments and well-memorized chains of texts and quotations so we can amass enough ammunition to win any arguments that someone may launch against us.
And this we label as “righteousness” or “holiness” or whatever the preferred terminology is in vogue in our favorite group. We cover over our wounds and ignore the wounded hearts of those around us as we champion our systematical arrangement of bullet-proof beliefs and whip up confidence among our comrades that we are marching in LOCKSTEP to Zion and to victory over sin.
But Barnabas had a different spirit, a free-thinker outside the box. Maybe he had personally been praying for Saul, the arch-enemy of Christians, for a long time as Jesus had taught him to do. He believed it was now time to lay hold on God's answers to their prayers and step out of the comfort zone, step out in faith in God's ability to do the impossibly amazing feat of capturing Saul with His love and grace. It was time to trust God and embrace his former enemy before all his questions were satisfied. He was in tune with the Spirit of God more than all the others and was willing to lay down his fears and in eager anticipation and humble vulnerability be came to Saul to listen to his heart. In doing so he got the scoop on the inside story and was able to be a campaigner of grace and an instrument of reconciliation used personally by God. Paul later taught this very truth – that we are all called to this ministry of reconciliation. (2 Cor. 5:18)
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Transform me into a Barnabas, a son of encouragement, a reconciler, stepping outside the box and rejecting fear.
