Thinking about the early Church...

As I was saying.... Which takes us back to the early church. Some thoughts I have had. I have long had a nostalgic feeling for the early church. But the early church is not the standard. So care must be taken….

I confess right here and now that I draw much comfort and guidance when looking at historic Christianity, which includes the early church. What catch’s my attention is the worldviews, that then result in some behaviors or actions. Man always moves in terms of what he believes. As a man thinks, so is he.

Church history shows that there was a relentless teaching against infanticide for the whole history of the church. While looking at church history I did find out that, what was my default “end times” understanding, is no where to be seen till the last two hundred years and is part and parcel of modern evangelicalism. Yes that left me pretty uncomfortable.

Huge chunks of the New Testament were taken up with Paul, etc, correcting behavior of the early church. The Corinthian books, Galatians. People blitzed during communion, behavior that was scandalous to even the pagans was being practiced in the church.( And you are proud!) Every issue of sinning Christian men that needs to be dealt with today, had to be dealt with by those sinning Christian men then.

Their advantages was that pagans had customs closer to Gods word than the church ( the church!) does today and those church leaders back then were giving instruction on how to conduct themselves to correct the problems, un-ashamedly used the word...,the word that you have been taught from youth.... (the Old Testament.)..which is able to save you. They knew that there was a standard. And knew what that standard was. The Old Testament wasn’t explained away. It was life.

The thinking spawned from the romantic period is now encrusted on us. We are used to moving through a pietistic gush of sentimentalism that we have been conditioned to think of as real Christian spirituality. Christian’s today will get excited about a book like "The Shack" and not see how it attacks the basic tenants of the faith. So long as something makes us "feel" like we are closer to God, its all good. (Swanson and Wilson rang the alarm bells pretty loud about that book. My wife saw that Costco had a huge pile of them on an end cap and a week later we went through the store and they were pretty much gone. Some churches had cases of them to give away. )

I can put as glossy sheen on the early church. But they were not more, “really” saved, than us. They still had to be told to work out their salvation with fear and trembling. To put on the mind of Christ, to take every thought captive, to see that they were not taken captive by human philosophies etc etc.

Our biggest handicap is that we can be ignorant as to how deeply our thought processes have been corrupted by this culture.