Today's reading: Joshua 19; Acts 7
Today's post should be pretty short. I don't have much to say on the passage itself, mostly something I think is valuable for us all to keep in mind.
The main accusation against Stephen seems to be blaspheming the temple, and so his argument in his defense is largely to point out that God is not bound to the temple, but appeared to the patriarchs and worked with/for Israel all over before Solomon finally built the temple in Jerusalem. God is working so far beyond just the location of the temple, and his accusation against those trying him seems to be that they are so narrowly focused that they are completely missing the broader picture. And while that line of reasoning starts with the charge of blaspheming the temple, he brings it around to their failure to recognize Jesus as the prophesied Messiah at the end of his defense, when they become enraged and kill him for what he says.
The thing I think is valuable for us to keep in mind is that it is easy for us to do this too. If you are reading this as a Christian then you are obviously not making this mistake in the same way as they were, failing to recognize who/what Jesus really was, but we can do it with a lot of other things. You see fights between Christians all the time on questions of theology or doctrine or issues of interpretation or practice. I have actually had it happen before that I was studying the Bible with someone and asked about a few verses I had recently noticed that seemed to all point to the same teaching, but it was different from what our church taught. And while this was nothing core to the faith, and certainly nothing heretical (other churches hold the view I was asking about), he got angry with me and asked why we even bothered studying together if I was going to approach the Word so ignorantly. And while that is hopefully a more extreme example than what others run into, this happens all the time to varying degrees.
We, like the Jewish council trying Stephen, assume that we have all the answers and that our answers are the correct ones, and we so easily forget that there are genuine and brilliant people, led by the same Holy Spirit, on the other side of the issue. And while yes, there are issues upon which our faith is built and for which there can only be one right answer, like the deity of Jesus, the historical crucifixion and resurrection, etc., we need to be willing to admit that we might be wrong. Especially when someone is able to show us where our views don't necessarily align with Scripture, like Stephen did to the Jewish leaders, we need to be willing to listen and prayerfully and thoughtfully consider that we might actually be wrong about something. Because while we will hopefully not be stoning someone for a view we disagree with, when we take such a stance and decide we are surely right, and allow our pride to lead us to view those who disagree as opposition, we miss out on important opportunities the Lord may want to use to grow us, strengthen us in our faith, and forge relationships that glorify him and spread the gospel.
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