A Ramble About Thriving

Recently, I have been reading through Acts in the Greek, and one thing that has stood out to me about the Apostolic community in the earliest of days is how very different of a picture it presented from the churches today. Those who had walked with Jesus and been discipled by Him, after He ascended, renounced their own claim to possession of anything and held everything owned by any one of them as belonging to everyone. Think about that for just a few minutes. Often, we read through these passages quickly and never really stop to think about it. Those immediately taught by Christ Jesus renounced their own possession of anything, and they did it almost immediately. Those taught and discipled by the twelve Apostles followed suit. It also says that everyone within the community who owned any land sold it, and gave the money from the sale to the apostles to distribute to anyone within the community who needed it so that no one who was a part of that community went without the necessities of life. They didn't need to do this. They weren't asked to do it. They did it as a response to the teaching and discipleship of Jesus Christ Himself. They risked, and even embraced, total poverty in order to give so that others might not go without, with no thought for their own needs, devoting themselves to prayer and the Sacraments. This church community, operating in this way, grew from a hundred and twenty members to many thousands within months.

The same kind of thing can be seen in the lives of the Saints as well. St. Francis of Assisi's adoption of total poverty is well known, and any time St. Ignatius of Loyola was given something or earned something to meet his needs, he used only what he needed and then gave away the rest to those just as poor as he was. Evagrios the Solitary, one of the Fathers of the Philokalia writing around the fourth century, wrote about being careful to guard yourself against possessions or the desire to acquire things, considering even the desire to acquire money or possessions so that you could be hospitable and help people a serious temptation by the enemy. He believed it was the edge of a cliff or a tightrope that if you walked it, you could very easily fall off and find yourself immersed in avarice masquerading as good intentions. The Scripture itself says that avarice is the root of all kinds of evil.

But these kinds of stories aren't told much in the churches today. They're glossed over, or ignored outright. And if they are told, they're considered “congregation reduction sermons,” because Christians in the churches don't want to hear them. These kinds of stories, and this kind of teaching demand a response from us that is very different from an accepted middle class lifestyle. Many pastors do not want to go there, regardless of what Jesus and His Apostles taught, and the response they were given by those who listened to them.

Often within churches, it is expected that “once you get your life right with Christ” that everything should begin to fall into place for you socially and financially. You should be able to clean yourself up, find a good job that you will work hard at, and eventually begin to bring in a middle class income. And when this doesn't happen, people within the church then begin to question your faith or commitment to Christ. This kind of thinking is found more within the prosperity gospel type of churches, but it occasionally creeps, almost subconsciously, into the thinking of those congregations and churches that refuse to be associated with them.

In the Scriptures, a rich young ruler approached Jesus at one time and asked Him what he could do to gain eternal life. Jesus told him, “you know the commandments, don't kill, don't steal, etc.” The young man said, “I've done all of these since I was a kid.” Jesus then told him, “The last thing you need to do is to sell everything you own, give the money to the poor, and then come and follow Me.” The Scriptures then say that the young man went away sad because he was very rich, and Jesus begins lamenting on how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

When Jesus told the parable of the sower, He talked about the seed that fell in among weeds. When the seed sprouted, the weeds grew up with the wheat, and eventually choked it to the point that it couldn't produce any grain because the weeds sucked all of the nourishment away from the plant and it was just trying to stay alive, much less produce any grain. He explicitly said this was the person who received the Gospel gladly, but the worries, riches, and possessions of this life crowded in and kept the person from producing any mature, usable spiritual fruit (unripened grain isn't usable for anything). He and those who have closely followed Him throughout history have warned time and again about the dangerous effect attachments to the things of this life like money and possessions have on our relationship with Christ Jesus and maturation in Him. They considered them so dangerous and so obstructive to our growth in Christ that they renounced them completely, got rid of what they had as soon as possible, and encouraged others to do the same. They treated money and possessions as toxic tools that were to be used and then disposed of as quickly as possible.

Today, most church members, like everyone else, just want to make enough money to be comfortable and have all of their needs and most of their wants met. They certainly don't want to live at or below the poverty line, even if they don't necessarily consider themselves to be, or want to be “rich”. Most probably feel like they still don't make enough money to consider themselves comfortable much less rich. The idea of voluntarily giving away everything and living in total poverty is abhorrent and deviant. Today also, most churches have their memberships in decline. Some are in quite steep decline, and many are closed or in bankruptcy. Consider that for a moment.

Consider also that the Church immediately following the ascension followed what Jesus taught them in both letter and Spirit and they grew by thousands within months. Within decades, Christian communities spanned the Near East, North Africa, and Europe. What was different between them and us? They got rid of their own weeds and stuck like glue to Jesus Christ, treating the Gospel as Gospel. Jesus Christ flowed through them because of it. The world took notice.

The reason why churches today are struggling or in decline is because they've chosen to shy away from the Gospel that Jesus taught in both word and action. In the ancient Church, the belief and practice of the Church was easily differentiated from everyone else. Today, people on the outside who observe the churches haven't any idea why they should bother with them because there's obviously nothing different between the churches and themselves. In the ancient Church, the charismata, the powers imbued by Grace, were flourishing because those followers of Christ stuck like glue to Him, and the power which they displayed was an indisputable proof of the validity of what they taught and practiced. Today, because of the weeds that are allowed to flourish, true charismata are rare, and all that most see are pale imitations and easily discerned charlatanism.

The question then arises, what do we do now? How do we, in this day and society, respond to this? The truth is that their society wasn't as different from ours as we like to think. Their society also had rules and regulations which had to be followed. They also had taxes, fees, and fines to pay. They also had authorities who had to be obeyed as much as they could be. Poverty then was looked down upon just as much as it is now and the poor could be treated far worse then than now. The truth is that what Jesus and His Apostles taught is just as applicable today as it was then, and the lives which they led were just as radical then as they would be considered today.

It doesn't mean that they didn't work. It doesn't mean that they didn't have jobs. It doesn't even mean that they didn't have families. And the truth is that there are still monastic communities today that order their lives according to these same principles where they will often either have jobs within the community or outside employment. They work in their outside employment and then donate their paychecks to the community to supply everyone's needs. Their time is split between work and devotion to prayer, fasting, and charity in a very similar way to the Apostolic Church.

The churches today tend to look more and more towards worldly models of successful business organizations and structures. Pastors tend more and more to emulate motivational speakers. More and more the ancient structures of the Church are ignored in favor of something new and fresh. All the while the churches are stagnating and weeds are growing up and choking the life out of their members. If the Church is to thrive, it must do so, not looking for something innovative and new, but it can only thrive by following the practices and manner of life with which it began. The Church can only thrive when it looks to Jesus Christ, allows Him to flow through it, and removes the weeds and obstructions which keep its fruit from maturing.