Acts of the Apostles

I've been really getting back into listening to my Bible Experience CDs in the car -- I simply cannot recommend these enough! It's not the best translation of the Bible (TNIV) but it's serviceable, and the production values on it are just stellar. You have professional voice actors, music, and sound effects to help take us away from monotone Bible readings to something that is truly lifelike and emotional.

We have to remember that the Bible was originally transmitted through oral tradition, and most Christians through history have experienced the Bible by listening to it. I'm not making a case for one method -- reading or listening to the Bible -- to be superior to the other, but instead that Christians should do both. Hearing the Word lets your mind conjure up the images and act on the imagination in a way that reading does not quite accomplish. Plus, when you hear it, you are not hearing your own predictable voice reading the Word, but someone else's, which has the effect of making you pay more attention.

Right now I'm listening through the book of Acts -- a very lengthy book, and quite underutilized in churches today, other than the occasional Pentecost sermon. Hearing it all the way through is a tremendous window into the early growth of the Christian church, and you just feel the palpable excitement of the believers as they witness miracles, experience growth, and form a community that spreads across the world. It's inspiring how many stories of apostles and disciples making a stand for their faith, even in the face of persecution and death.

I've also come away with the realization that the Jewish religious leaders didn't just give up the ghost after Jesus was resurrected, but continued to fight against the tide of Christ and his followers, especially Paul (who they surely saw as a traitor to their cause). Paul's own persecution eerily parallels Jesus' in some ways -- the crowds wanting to kill him, his trials before the Roman and religious authorities, his flogging, and his message of the gospel that he was able to share to the people.

A prof told me that none of us will ever be half the Christian man that Paul was, and Paul considered himself not even worthy to be considered in the same league as Jesus. But each, in our own way, are placed in the right spots for God's work, and that is a privilege that we cannot deny.