The Economic System of the Apostles
by Mike Kimel
The Economic System of the Apostles
I am not a Christian, but if I was, I suspect the following verses from the Acts of the Apostles would have an impact on my life.
Acts of the Apostles, 2: 44-47
And all that believed were together, and had all things
common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all
[men], as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one
accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat
their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, Praising God, and
having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church
daily such as should be saved.
Acts of the Apostles, 4: 32-35
And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart
and of one soul: neither said any [of them] that ought of the things
which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And
with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the
Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any
among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or
houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,
And laid [them] down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made
unto every man according as he had need.”
But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife,
sold a possession, And kept back [part] of the price, his wife also
being privy [to it], and brought a certain part, and laid [it] at the
apostles’ feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine
heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back [part] of the price
of the land? Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it
was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this
thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. And
Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and
great fear came on all them that heard these things. And the young
men arose, wound him up, and carried [him] out, and buried [him]. And
it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not
knowing what was done, came in. And Peter answered unto her, Tell me
whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much.
Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to
tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have
buried thy husband [are] at the door, and shall carry thee out. Then
fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and
the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying [her] forth,
buried [her] by her husband. And great fear came upon all the
church, and upon as many as heard these things.
How do you interpret these selections?
I was OK with this story until Peter gives the guy such a hard time for not turning over ALL the dough. This makes Peter seem like a modern day TV preacher.
Emily
I much prefer the unambiguous prescription from 1 John 3: 17-18
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
Full disclosure I don’t count myself as a practicing (i.e. church attending) Christian either although I am grateful for the doctrine and philosophy I was taught (and remember hopefully) through adolescence.
But wait didn’t Marx some up with “to each as he had need.” No. He was referring to Peter. Further Marx was arguing that Peter’s extreme approach was not practical for a long time at least.
See “The Critique of the Golgotha Program” http://bit.ly/Q6tQkF
Full disclosure, I am an atheist, I have been an atheist as long as I can remember,and my parents are atheists. So why do I know that something is written in The Acts of the Apostles while many (most … almost all) Christians don’t ?
Paraphrasing Luke:
“From those to whom much has been given, from them much shall be expected.”
This is the spirit that has been lost in our national plunge in what Wilkinson calls “spirit level.”
“From those to whom much has been given, from them much shall be expected.”
That sounds like biblican justification for the estate tax.
Emily
Predestination.
The saved are saved, the rest are to be wretched.
Nothing in the bible; old or new matters.
The African slave was the ‘spawn of Cain’, rightfully abused!
False prophets outnumber the real.
The “proud to be right to life” Ryan, Romney, Akin and Mourdock to name a few….. read god’s mind, and spew it as revealed truth.
I understand why the Romans threw them to the lions, too bad they ran out of lions.
ilsm
well
i was going to point out that “share the wealth” has been the best economic survival strategy for about a million years.
the Christians were not inventing the idea, though Jesus seems to have felt that the Jews needed reminding, and tacked on that bit about the Samaritan to give them something to think about.
But I don’t remember any passages where he said “tax the rich to pay for your needs.”
But I don’t think I will point any of this out after all.
Even Jesus spoke always in parables “lest the wicked hear, and hearing turn, and I should save them.”
The people to whom Luke (author of Acts) was speaking about were Jews in the first place and at that time considered themselves such. Minor detail, but everyone should know as a matter of general knowledge that the Christian/Jew dichotomy was a concept that only began to develop in the 2nd century and was projected back onto biblical writings (perhaps with some editing) in order to reinforce evolving points of view. At the time there were only variations in Judaism. Non-Jew converts were part of the fulfillment of certain Jewish prophecies.
More importantly was that at that time the sect that would evolve into what we know as Christianity expected the imminent end of the world. Jesus’ resurrection was to be the first of many more to come. In that belief system, a person’s perceived time horizons are very short. Pooling wealth makes more sense than saving anything whatsoever for posterity or even for next year, because there will be no posterity, no tomorrow really. So it makes no sense to hang on to possessions, but to share them with the people who are going to be called up into heaven along with you, shortly. To not give up one’s possessions therefore might be more a sign of lack of faith rather than material selfishness.
Other themes in the bible make more sense when viewed in that light. For instance Paul saying (in one of the early letters – don’t remember which), if you’re married, stay married, if you’re not, don’t get married. In the later portions of the New Testament, written after several decades had passed and the expected end of the world had not occurred (or more significantly, believers actually died without being resurrected), you can see the metamorphosis into instructions for behavior. Believers were to model their lives as upstanding members of Roman society by adhering to the head of household structure of the pagan Romans.
Cris Crawford
no doubt true, as true as any history. but if the gospels are to be taken seriously… and I think that as a guide to sanity they should be… there is a fairly clear teaching both against the worship of money and against a mechanical kind of “faith” that is really a form of arrogant pride.
my own take is that neither Peter nor Paul quite “got it.” But they got enough of it to spread the basic idea and give us poor ornry sinners something to hang onto in times of darkness.
To take coberly’s point a bit farther is not what a lot of folks practice today the equivalent of the Pharisees in the gospel. It is interesting that christian groups tried common ownership such as at New Harmony IN and the Shakers and all failed eventually.
As noted if the end of the world were due things would be very different than if it was not, today of course we do hear continuous predictions of the end of the world on the Media. And the end of the world has been around as a possibility since the early 1950s.
Mike,
The most important element of Christianity to an understanding of it’s political function is that of ‘divine authority’. Get yourself into the position of speaking on behalf of God to God-fearing people, and there’s no limit to what you can get away with.
What’s written in the ostensible ‘holy books’ of any given religion is just a resource to draw upon. Some individual religious read it closely and care a lot about what it should mean to their daily lives. But political hucksters who leverage religion generally just select passages that tend to reinforce absolute obedience and ignore the rest.
It’s rather similar to the way politicians use party platforms: something to occupy the over-zealous rubes while the real business is being attended to in private meetings.
(And of course Cris C. provided important interpretive context for those who actually want to understand “what The Good Book says”. It’s just that such an understanding is not really to the point where politics is concerned.)
Emily,
The flipside is, if you have a community where the rules of membership are X, allowing people to break the rules leads to… well, we’ve seen that writ large in the financial industry in the last few years, haven’t we?
Coberly,
I am not a Christian and I haven’t read the Bible in years, other than these passages which I was looking up. That said, I am certain I am firm theological ground when I state that the Acts of the Apostles is not intended to be read as a parable told by Jesus, either in whole or in parts such as the little story in the third passage I cited.
Chris C,
If a non-believer looks at most systems of beliefs, it is possible to find reasons for why the believers have certain views and behave in certain ways. However, the notion that Jesus was wrong when he said not all who were then present would perish before he returned, or that those who knew him personally were wrong about the same thing, is not relevant for a believer, because, for a believer, Jesus could not have been wrong about that and hence his followers can’t have been motivated by that belief.
My only point was that if one does believe in Jesus, then it is hard to see how acting in a way different from what he preached and how those who heard his words personally lived makes sense.
kimel
i can’t imagine why you think i was saying that it was.
Kimel
it is hard to know exactly what Jesus “preached” or what he meant by what he said, or if he said what he is said to have said.
nevertheless the story hangs together, and for me at least does not have the ring of a lie or fairy tale. i’d settle for some error in transmission, and i have learned… would have learned right here if nowhere else… that what people, including myself, think something means is unlikely to be the last word.
people are Christians for the same reason they are husbands or wives. They like enough of what they hear to put up with a degree of uncertainty, and they believe in being loyal to someone or something that has given them at least a glimpse of happiness. in other words, they are not lawyers.
I put my faith in neither books or politicians.
If god wanted me to act a certain way, and he meant it, he would give the law to me.
If god gives truth to Ryan, Akin or Joseph Smith and expects me to have faith in their words, then I will ignore it.
Has humanity declined so much from the enlightenment which said “all men are created equal….”?
It was not so enlightened, they had slaves and only landed men voted.
“Proud to be pro life” may be a slogan, it is more aulation of the vatican’s former hilter youth.
ilsm
ilsm
I think Tom Paine beat you to the idea that if God wants me to know something, he can tell me himself and not expect me to “have faith” in some preacher.
I am inclined to agree with Tom. But sometimes we learn something from teachers, or preachers, and there is enough worth thinking about in the Gospels that you don’t have to take on “faith”. In fact, I am pretty sure Jesus was warning against that kind of faith. I have no idea where John got his ideas about faith, but I suspect it was because John was such a “troubled” person that Jesus constantly had to say to him, “just have faith in me.” But while that may be the best course for some people, Jesus also says “judge a tree by it’s fruit”… It turns out there is nothing in the gospels that sounds remotely like a TV evangelist.
The founding fathers had the insight to give America the motto E Pluribus Unum.
In the 1950’s “WE” changed the motto to In Gawd We Trust. This gave cover of religious respectability for the imperialism that the US marched out around the world since then.
Its a cabal of the global inherited rich and the Xtians that keep us tied to our current social organization, IMO.
Regarding historical interpretation of scripture:
I am not a traditional theist by a long shot and definitely do not adhere to an explicitly Christian dogma. However I was taught about the bible (at a liberal seminary where I studied theology for two years) by historical critical scholars who were at the same time very religious. It is possible to look at the bible historically and contextually and still have faith. One can believe that the writings we have today are human ways of expressing divine truths, and at the same time be as aggressive as possible about trying to figure out who wrote what and what their human motivations might have been. So, I suppose one can feel as if communal living were one of those divine truths. I see nothing wrong with that. On the other hand I do have problems with people using biblical blurbs such as “spare the rod and spoil the child” and ancient purity dictums to bolster anachronistically violent points of view.
What I learned about Luke/Acts (one week’s lecture worth) was that both were apparently written by the same person (Luke I suppose) and in the style of bibliography that was standard for that era, including having two parts. By our modern standards that style would be somewhat sensationalist. Also it was probably written after the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem in 70 AD, same as the other gospels (which is suspected because they contain material that makes no sense if the temple had not yet been destroyed). Only the early letters of Paul are thought to have been written before the destruction of the temple by the historical critical scholars, and the scholars can detect some material in the gospels that might have been copied from earlier sources. Of course, the scholars don’t all agree.
Regarding the idea of whether people should have everything in common or not, I personally prefer a system of private property and voluntary exchange with communal living reserved for my family, but I wish I lived under a system of government that didn’t encourage fiscal irresponsibility and the granting of economic privilege to favored groups. I would love to see people who wish to live communally succeed in doing so, though in my Utopia they would have to acquire the resources to live that way without resorting to the use of force (i.e. requiring others to give up their property). I guess I should add that I personally think sharing one’s wealth is a good idea, which I don’t care to justify, it’s just how I am. But I definitely believe in keeping some of my wealth for myself and family, like those two people in Acts who dropped dead.
Emily (and Cris)
I was and am bothered by the story of “the two people in Acts who dropped dead.” I don’t know how christians “explain” it, or how it got included in the “Bible.” But it seems to me to be very unchristian.
it does not trouble me that parts of the “bible” are impossible (so far) for me to reconcile with the parts i “like.” even without Jesus’ warning about false prophets i think ordinary intelligence would teach you (generic you) that anything said, written, translated, remembered… is subject to error if not deliberate misrepresentation. nevertheless the teachings of jesus seem to me to add up to a coherent “idea” that is better than, frankly, all the other “ideas” floating around. i realize that since I get to decide exactly what that Idea is, there may be some bias on my part. nevertheless..
for Mike
(assuming the existence of “god” and the importance of “jesus”, which you may regard as a contrafactual assumption, but note the results.}
i don’t think God cares if you believe in him, and I don’t think Jesus cares if you are a Christian
what may matter is that you try to find “the way, the truth, and the life.” and if you do this it doesn’t matter if you call yourself an atheist, or a buddhist, or a moslem, or a Taoist, or whatever the American indians called their “religion.”
Thing is, you already know this. Jesus says as much. Though it seems to help some of us to be reminded from time to time that the “law” is “love god with all of your heart (and it is not obvious what that means) and “like it” love your neighbor as yourself.
And the story of Jesus is told in such a way as to help us understand what this might mean, and, yes, to give us some hope that it all makes sense in the end… in a way that matters to mere humans who care about those they love.
Most of what you read about “religion” or “Christianity” is completely beside the point. if not actually contrary to the point.
Emily (and Cris)
I was and am bothered by the story of “the two people in Acts who dropped dead.” I don’t know how christians “explain” it, or how it got included in the “Bible.” But it seems to me to be very unchristian.
it does not trouble me that parts of the “bible” are impossible (so far) for me to reconcile with the parts i “like.” even without Jesus’ warning about false prophets i think ordinary intelligence would teach you (generic you) that anything said, written, translated, remembered… is subject to error if not deliberate misrepresentation. nevertheless the teachings of jesus seem to me to add up to a coherent “idea” that is better than, frankly, all the other “ideas” floating around. i realize that since I get to decide exactly what that Idea is, there may be some bias on my part. nevertheless..
for Mike
(assuming the existence of “god” and the importance of “jesus”, which you may regard as a contrafactual assumption, but note the results.}
i don’t think God cares if you believe in him, and I don’t think Jesus cares if you are a Christian
what may matter is that you try to find “the way, the truth, and the life.” and if you do this it doesn’t matter if you call yourself an atheist, or a buddhist, or a moslem, or a Taoist, or whatever the American indians called their “religion.”
Thing is, you already know this. Jesus says as much. Though it seems to help some of us to be reminded from time to time that the “law” is “love god with all of your heart (and it is not obvious what that means) and “like it” love your neighbor as yourself.
And the story of Jesus is told in such a way as to help us understand what this might mean, and, yes, to give us some hope that it all makes sense in the end… in a way that matters to mere humans who care about those they love.
Most of what you read about “religion” or “Christianity” is completely beside the point. if not actually contrary to the point.
Emily (and Cris)
I was and am bothered by the story of “the two people in Acts who dropped dead.” I don’t know how christians “explain” it, or how it got included in the “Bible.” But it seems to me to be very unchristian.
it does not trouble me that parts of the “bible” are impossible (so far) for me to reconcile with the parts i “like.” even without Jesus’ warning about false prophets i think ordinary intelligence would teach you (generic you) that anything said, written, translated, remembered… is subject to error if not deliberate misrepresentation. nevertheless the teachings of jesus seem to me to add up to a coherent “idea” that is better than, frankly, all the other “ideas” floating around. i realize that since I get to decide exactly what that Idea is, there may be some bias on my part. nevertheless..
for Mike
(assuming the existence of “god” and the importance of “jesus”, which you may regard as a contrafactual assumption, but note the results.}
i don’t think God cares if you believe in him, and I don’t think Jesus cares if you are a Christian
what may matter is that you try to find “the way, the truth, and the life.” and if you do this it doesn’t matter if you call yourself an atheist, or a buddhist, or a moslem, or a Taoist, or whatever the American indians called their “religion.”
Thing is, you already know this. Jesus says as much. Though it seems to help some of us to be reminded from time to time that the “law” is “love god with all of your heart (and it is not obvious what that means) and “like it” love your neighbor as yourself.
And the story of Jesus is told in such a way as to help us understand what this might mean, and, yes, to give us some hope that it all makes sense in the end… in a way that matters to mere humans who care about those they love.
Most of what you read about “religion” or “Christianity” is completely beside the point. if not actually contrary to the point.
Emily (and Cris)
I was and am bothered by the story of “the two people in Acts who dropped dead.” I don’t know how christians “explain” it, or how it got included in the “Bible.” But it seems to me to be very unchristian.
it does not trouble me that parts of the “bible” are impossible (so far) for me to reconcile with the parts i “like.” even without Jesus’ warning about false prophets i think ordinary intelligence would teach you (generic you) that anything said, written, translated, remembered… is subject to error if not deliberate misrepresentation. nevertheless the teachings of jesus seem to me to add up to a coherent “idea” that is better than, frankly, all the other “ideas” floating around. i realize that since I get to decide exactly what that Idea is, there may be some bias on my part. nevertheless..
for Mike
(assuming the existence of “god” and the importance of “jesus”, which you may regard as a contrafactual assumption, but note the results.}
i don’t think God cares if you believe in him, and I don’t think Jesus cares if you are a Christian
what may matter is that you try to find “the way, the truth, and the life.” and if you do this it doesn’t matter if you call yourself an atheist, or a buddhist, or a moslem, or a Taoist, or whatever the American indians called their “religion.”
Thing is, you already know this. Jesus says as much. Though it seems to help some of us to be reminded from time to time that the “law” is “love god with all of your heart (and it is not obvious what that means) and “like it” love your neighbor as yourself.
And the story of Jesus is told in such a way as to help us understand what this might mean, and, yes, to give us some hope that it all makes sense in the end… in a way that matters to mere humans who care about those they love.
Most of what you read about “religion” or “Christianity” is completely beside the point. if not actually contrary to the point.
sorry for the double post. i think my computer is an atheist.
Mike seems to think of God as the old testament guy with the personality problem. Kind of person who demands total obedience.
I think it’s pretty clear that Jesus is offering us something like total freedom. Of course we are responsible for what we do with that freedom. But it is not a case of God “punishing” us… any more than he punishes us for breaking the law of gravity.
There are just consequences… cause and effect… to what we do.
And Cris seems to think that Acts is some kind of prescription for how we should behave in our own lives now. It might be an example for better or worse of what might be done, but I can’t find, even on its own terms, any suggestion that we are “commanded” to live the way the early Christians did. On the other hand there are consequences to greed and selfishness, as well as “risks” to charity and trusting. That’s the adventure of the thing.
But most people don’t seem to be happy unless they can find someone to tell them what to do. Even those who think of themselves as “rational.”
Matthew 25:31 seems awfully like a command to me. It’s politely worded, but the implication is perfectly clear:
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’”
I can find no instance where allowing someone to die of neglect does not fall under this command – notice how the phrasing used is that of inaction: you gave me nothing to eat, you gave me nothing to drink, you did not invite me in, &ct.
Roger Burgess,
There’s a lot in the NT that even a non-believer like myself can approve of, such as the passage you quoted. (I’d hope that animals qualify, given that animal rescue is my thing.)
Coberly,
But of course, there’s more than just the passage Burgess cites. With all due respect, you do a lot of picking and choosing. My views are what they are based on trying to read and take the whole thing together. I’m guessing what is in there is in there for a reason. But that wasn’t the point of the post. Burgess’ comment would have made for an equally good post.
Kimel and Roger Burgess (thanks for the example, btw.)
my picking and choosing is only a product of my attention span. i can’t think of, much less say, everything at once.
and i think you delude yourself if you don’t think you do the same thing.
I would argue that the “command” about “when i was hungry…” is not phrased as a command for a good reason. It’s a parable (perhaps), or maybe a prediction. I could say to the man who jumped out of an airplane without a parachute: “you are dead now because you did not wear a parachute.” that is not the same thing as saying, “Thou shalt not not wear a parachute.” or even “I will kill you if you don’t wear a parachute.”
I may be “picking and choosing” but I can’t take all the words Jesus is said to have said as “literal.”
Unlike those of us here, he was trying to get people to think.
Roger
btw Matt 25:31 scares the hell out of me. because I do not follow its prescription.
If I am wrong about the nature of the universe and everything i could be in for a hot time.
on the other hand i think it is funny as hell that some who say “i am not a christian” insist upon a literal interpretation of each and every word in the Bible.
I am not sure I can even give a literal interpretation of each and every word in my comments.
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coberly,
I am not insisting on anything, and obviously I do understand the concept of parables. I like to give examples in analogies myself. So consider the following parable…
A man comes home and tells his wife, “I have seen the light. The ancient Greeks were right, the true gods are those that dwell on Olympus.”
So the wife says, “Wonderful, my husband, let us make sacrifice unto Zeus.”
At which the husband responds, “Hold on a second there. Zeus is not real. We could, of course, make sacrifice to Zoroaster.”
“I’m a little fuzzy on ancient Greek theology, but are you certain Zoroaster is a god of Olympus?”
“But of course, my ignorant wife,”
His wife smiles meekly and says, “I just wish my father was here. He was a classical scholar, he could give us advice on how best to please the gods. Too bad he in the underworld now.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, woman! Your father perished in his bed and his spirit has been dissolved into the ether. Only warriors go to Valhalla!”
One morning the wife realized her husband wasn’t a billionaire, as he had so often claimed, but rather a member of the Kiwanis, which he insisted was the same thing. She filed for divorce on the same day. Thot was well pleased, and would vouch for the wife before Ra when she got hit by a passing semi in the following week.
Call that the parable of the picker and chooser, and take of it what lesson you will.
kimel
i, of course, can make no sense of your parable at all, which i assume is your point.
On the other hand I can make a great deal of coherent sense out of “most of” the parables of Jesus.
I told you at the beginning of this exchange that I had no shame in “picking and choosing”, but it is clear that I cannot explain to you why.
“Jesus always spoke in parables, ‘Lest the wicked hear, and hearing turn, and I should save them.'”
You, Mike Kimel, are not wicked, but you appear to have a commitment to ridiculing the ideas of those who seem to you to be “christian.” Note I say “seem,” because I do not claim to be a Christian, only a person with a non standard way of “understanding” what it was I think Jesus was saying, or trying to say, and by extension what “god” if there is such a person might really care about… and it isn’t ham sandwiches.
mike
btw i have to go to work. won’t be back til after this thread has disappeared. let me know if you read my reply to you. don’t have to argue with me… just give me the satisfaction of knowing i wasn’t talking entirely to myself.
i do not believe that in general it is possible to change anyone else’s mind, unless that mind is ready to be changed for reasons of its own.
coberly,
I sent you an e-mail…
On the question of the couple dropping dead — the text says,
But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back [part] of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.
That does not sound to me like the problem was with how much he chose to give to the church; the problem was with lying about what it represented. Peter says clearly “after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?” — you were in control of how much you gave. The condemnation Peter makes is “thou hast…lied.”