Today’s reading: Proverbs 20; Acts 24
Felix is a perfect example of what we have talked about a few times recently, that some people simply cannot be persuaded without a change of heart. Also, unrelated to Felix, I have a couple thoughts to share on reading the Bible generically.
I've said before that, for me, coming to a place of faith in Jesus was primarily a logical affair, and that that led me, for a long time, to assume that when someone didn't believe, they just didn't have all the information. I'm not going to rehash that whole discussion again here, but if you don't want to go back and read those other posts about it, the extremely short version is that I don't believe that's true anymore.
And in our passage today, I think Felix exemplifies this point really well. Luke tells us that, starting out, Felix had "a rather accurate knowledge of the Way," though there is no mention of being a follower of Jesus himself. Then, over the next two years, Luke tells us that Felix often conversed with Paul. I'm assuming, given that his reason for leaving Paul in prison at the end was as a favor to the Jews, that he had not, in that time, turned to Christ. So we have a man who started off with a pretty good understanding of Christianity, and then spent two years regularly talking to maybe the most persuasive and effective evangelist in the early church, only to walk away from that time as a non-believer.
This kind of example is why I've urged in those earlier posts that we don't keep pushing and trying to persuade people indefinitely. When someone has all the information and is refusing to respond to it, more information isn't going to suddenly make a difference. That's not to say they may never have a change of heart or circumstance that opens them up to the message in a way that hadn't been willing to consider it before, but I truly do believe that when someone is in this place, if we continue to push and try to persuade, all we are doing is helping to thicken the callouses they are building up on their heart as they rebuff, over and over again, the voice of the Holy Spirit and the offer of grace and freedom in Christ.
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Apart from my thoughts on Felix, I said I have a couple general thoughts I wanted to share. I haven’t been posting nearly as often lately, not because I haven’t had the time to write, but because I haven’t really had anything to write about, and that is what has led me to these thoughts.
The first thought I wanted to share is just an encouragement that it is perfectly okay to read the Bible and not “get something from it.” I have heard people say before that you should always walk away from your time reading the Bible with something to chew on from your reading; a question you need answered, something you struggle with, something to praise God about, etc. I just want to encourage you that it is perfectly fine to read and not have that. Especially in a narrative, like Acts, I don’t see any reason to expect that to be the case. Luke wrote Luke and Acts for Theophilus, to give him an orderly account of the things that Jesus and His followers did. Do you think, in writing such an orderly account, it helps Luke’s cause to be obscure? No, of course not! That’s not how you write a narrative like this! Sure, you might leave something obscure to build tension and/or draw your readers’ attention to a specific point or idea, but if the point is for Luke to explain to Theophilus what has been going on, it’s pretty reasonable to expect that, reading the account, you too will understand what Luke wanted to convey.
This is purely anecdotal, but I feel like my experience teaching narrative chunks of the Bible really enforces this. When I was one of the teachers in a house church I used to be part of, a handful of times over the years we decided to teach a narrative book like Acts, Genesis, etc. It would always start out really fun and energetic, and there was a lot to talk about in terms of the social and cultural context of the story, some of the main themes the author was trying to draw out, the purpose of the book, etc. But literally every single time we taught narrative, we would hit a point where we would be saying, “How can we speed this up so we can move on to the next book?” It wasn’t that we didn’t like the book, but once you’ve covered the context and themes, there’s not all that much to talk about that people won’t get from just reading the passage (that is the whole point of narrative after all). At that point, teaching felt like you were just rehashing the same points, doing nothing but reading the narrative with folks, or stretching to find something novel in the text that may or may not actually be the point of it.
My personal view is that, especially in these larger narrative chunks of Scripture, there will be times that the Holy Spirit draws your attention to something, and clearly you should pay attention when He does, but I really don’t think there is any reason to feel like you have to force something out of a passage every time you read it.
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The other thought I have been having lately is on Proverbs. I have approached the book of Proverbs a lot of different ways over the years: I have read read a chapter of Proverbs every day (so reading the whole book once a month) for a couple years; I have read a section or verse every day, trying to meditate directly on the specific proverb; I have read a Psalm or Proverb every day, reading both books twice a year; and in this plan we have included Psalms and Proverbs in the list like any other books, so reading each once in the two-year track through the Old Testament. I honestly feel like this approach has left me getting very little out of the book.
I think that with so much going on in each chapter of Proverbs, it’s too much for my brain to latch on to more than one or two things, but when we’re reading it so seldom, my brain is trying to take everything in, and then really latching onto to little to nothing. I’ve come to realize that, at least for me, reading a chapter of Proverbs a day is the most helpful. This gives me ample familiarity with the content, but it also gives the opportunity, every day, for the Holy Spirit to draw my attention to whatever He wants me paying attention to. Some days, that isn’t anything specific, but very often it’s a piece of wisdom that is very applicable to current (or recent) circumstances, and gives me something very actionable to appropriate wisdom in a highly practical way.
I get that it might be different for other people, but, for me at least, treating Proverbs like any other book in the reading plan has meant I really am not absorbing any of the wisdom out of it. I think I’m going to go back to reading a chapter a day so that there is more opportunity to see how the wisdom of Proverbs applies to my daily life, relationships, choices, etc.
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