Conversions require conversions

In "Turning Sauls into Pauls," Peter Leithart shows from Acts that welcoming converts into the Church requires a conversion of the hearts of Church members.

…Ananias isn’t merely a sacramental minister. His experience mimics Saul’s because Ananias undergoes his own conversion. Saul has to be changed, but Ananias has to be changed in order to welcome him.

The sun & the moon & the stars

And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.

There's something about Deuteronomy 4:19; I just can't get it out of my head. It puts me in mind of what Paul said at the Areopagus in Acts 17:26-28.

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for

‘In him we live and move and have our being;'
as even some of your own poets have said,
 ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

Israel's particularity as God's chosen people (one of the major points of Deuteronomy 4, by the way) is sometimes taken as a sign of God's rejection of all other peoples. However, the Lord of Israel is simultaneously the Lord of Creation, and he has written signs in his creation, signs which we are unaccustomed to reading as such. We think time is a malleable social construct (Exhibit A: Daylight Savings Time) and national borders are arbitrary political constructs. But Paul, in his Acts 17 meditation on the aftermath of the Babel debacle (Genesis 11), argues that time and borders were made by God in order to channel our social relationships back into a search for him.

The sun and the moon and the stars, Genesis 1:14-19 tells us, tell us the days and hours and years are passing in ordered succession, and so the moment is arriving when we must reckon with their Creator. But instead of feeling our way toward him and finding him, the nations are drawn away and bow down to them. They turn these governors into idols, failing to recognize that theirs is merely a designated authority.

We who are now God's chosen people in the new Israel, his Church, are as prone as our ancient fathers to bow down to idols. Rather than worshiping the evident power of the sun and the moon and the stars to govern our lives, however, we, along with the nations of today, think we can claim and manipulate that power to our own ends. We are lords of time and space, displacing the Creator of space and time alike.

The particularity of God's chosen people isn't a sign he has rejected all other peoples. In his mercy, he has left us all allotted periods and boundaries so that we should seek him. In our sin, we are too readily and quickly satisfied instead with the sun and the moon and the stars, and, too often, with our infantile conviction we cannot be governed even by them. Because we cannot and will not find God, then, he came to be not far from each one of us.

For in him we live and move and have our being.

Genesis 11 as interpreted by Acts 17

The other day, I was struck by this statement of Paul’s in his address to the Areopagus: “He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth, having determined appointed seasons, and the boundaries of their dwellings, that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:26-27) That is, the Lord placed each nation in its particular place, within its particular borders, for the purpose (amongst others, no doubt) of encouraging them to seek him out.

The Lord did this back in Genesis 11. There we read of how all mankind spoke one language and lived in one place. In their vanity, they worked together to build a tower up to the sky so that they might make a permanent name for themselves. The Lord chose to frustrate their vanity and reserve the heavens for himself. “Therefore the name of it was called Babel, because Yahweh confused the language of all the earth, there. From there, Yahweh scattered them abroad on the surface of all the earth.” (Genesis 11:9)

I had seen Babel as punishment, but Paul sees it as grace. The Lord prevented mankind from competing with him, from trying to contest his ownership of the heavens. He took away their common language and flattened their tower by spreading them over the face of the earth. The Lord took away their vanity and pride so that they would stop trying to take over the heavens. He humbled them so they might become humble. In their humility, they might realize they were not the Lord’s competitors, but his creatures. Perhaps they would realize they were sinners whose only hope before this clearly Almighty God would be to appeal to his mercy. Perhaps they would stop gazing covetously at the heavens and look for an almighty and merciful Lord around themselves. After all, he is not far from each one of us.

A prooftext for God’s omnipresence, surely. But also a reminder that God did not reserve the heavens for himself. Instead, he left the heavens to dwell not far from us, to dwell with and amongst us, to suffer and die for us, and in his good time and good pleasure to raise us up with him so that, just as he ascended back up to the heavens after his crucifixion and resurrection, we might rise up to greet him, and dwell with him, in the glorious heavens to come.

And still, he is not far from each one of us.