God Running is a place for anyone who wants to (or even anyone who wants to want to) love Jesus more deeply, follow Jesus more closely, and love people the way Jesus wants us to.

Read Acts 28:11-19

Acts 28:11-19

In our last post we left Paul on the island of Malta, and we saw some of the results from Paul’s suffering. If you’re interested you can read more here: “Giving Thanks for Suffering–Acts 28:1-10”. He and his shipmates wintered there on the island of Malta for three months before they sailed north to Syracuse, a port in Sicily. After three days, the winds became favorable and they sailed up the West Coast of Italy, toward Rome. During their voyage, while in the port of Puteoli, they stayed with a group of brothers for seven days, after which they sailed the rest of the way to Rome. And when they came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself, with the soldier who was guarding him.

After three days, Paul called together the local leaders of the Jews. And he shared with them the injustice of his situation. And how the Jews from Jerusalem had objected to his being found innocent. And how he was compelled to appeal to Caesar.

Rome (and the rest of the world) Before Christ

Last night (at the time of this writing) Kathy and I went out to the movie theatre. It’s something we rarely do these days but we wanted to see the movie Gladiator II on the big screen. And Denzel Washington has this one line in the movie where he says,

“Let’s see Rome–let’s see us–for what and who we really are.”

He delivered that line after sharing that the Roman Colosseum is the finest temple Rome ever built. The idea being that Roman culture worshipped power. In fact, at the core of Washington’s character is a worship of power.

While watching this movie set in ancient Rome, I was reminded of Tom Holland’s book Dominion. Holland, a self proclaimed atheist, loves ancient Roman history. And he set out to write a book about how his values were shaped by the ancient Romans and Greeks. But as he was doing his research for his book, he came to realize his values didn’t come from Rome or Greece at all. His values come from Christ, and Christ’s followers.

Also in Holland’s book you’ll find something in common with last night’s movie.

Before Jesus, ancient culture was all about power.

Holland writes that in ancient Rome slaves were vessels with which their owners could relieve themselves of their sexual urges. The language in ancient documents describing these relationships is similar to a description of a man using a hole in the ground to relieve himself of urine. The idea that a more powerful person would use his power to his own advantage, at the expense of a less powerful person, was simply an accepted part of society.

Consistent with Holland’s book, in Rodney Stark’s book, The Rise of Christianity, we learn that around 130 BC a Roman sensor proposed that marriage be made compulsory. Because powerful men in the upper classes held marriage in such low esteem, they would sexually engage with prostitutes or other men, and they would remain single. The sensor proposed compulsory marriage because of the threat of population decline. I learned about this from a Joe Heschmeyer video, and in it he says: today we have incels, but the Roman men were vcels.

Stark also wrote: “However, even when Greco-Roman men did marry, they usually produced small families — not even legal sanctions and inducements could achieve the goal of an average of three children per family. One reason for this was infanticide –far more babies were born than were allowed to live. Seneca regarded the drowning of children at birth as both reasonable and commonplace.”

It was just accepted that the least powerful in ancient Roman culture were murdered by the more powerful. Infanticide was rampant.

Also, consider this quote about the sexual revolution from Justin Brierley: “The sexual revolution of the 1960s was not the first sexual revolution. The first sexual revolution was the sexual revolution of the first century. Because Greco-Roman culture was a very permissive culture. Now, it was different, the sexual relationships were sort of more socio-cultural and hierarchical in nature. But a Roman male could have sex with whoever he wanted, male or female. It was very liberal, you could say, but it was very bad: for slaves, and for women, and for children. And it was Christians who, when they said, actually we are going to constrain male sexuality, they changed the world when they did that. When they said, it’s really important that a man has one wife and he’s not able to simply divorce her just like that. And, he has to be faithful to her, and is not going to be able to sleep with the scullery maid, or whoever.”

Holland and Stark say the same thing as Brierley. It was Christianity that moved the ancients away from a culture of power, toward a culture of love and charity.

In today’s text and in the last few chapters of the book of Acts we’ve seen how Paul was treated by the Roman authorities, and the motivation for why he was treated the way he was treated was political power: favor with the Jews, and staying in the good graces of Caesar.

Things we take for granted today simply weren’t present before Jesus. Human rights (Holland laughs at the idea that the ancients would entertain such a notion as human rights), loving your enemy, monogamy for life, helping people on the margins, helping the weak, equality among humans: none of these things were a part of ancient Western culture.

“. . . let’s see us — for what and who we really are,” Denzel Washington said.

Without Jesus, without Christ, we’ll find ourselves falling into dark places.

We’ll devolve into a culture of power.

Both as individuals and as a society.

So pursue Jesus, with everything you have.

Notes:

Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, Basic Books; Illustrated edition (October 29, 2019)

Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries, Harper San Francisco, (May 9, 1997)

Craig Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, IVP Academic; 2nd edition, January 3, 2014

Joe Heschmeyer, How Christianity Conquered Rome (and How We Can Do It Again), Shameless Popery Podcast Video

Justin Brierley, Christians vs The Sexual Revolution, YouTube short

Available on Google Play Books and on Amazon!

Love Like Jesus: How Jesus Loved People (and how you can love like Jesus)

Love Like Jesus begins with the story of how after a life of regular church attendance and Bible study, Bennett was challenged by a pastor to study Jesus. That led to an obsessive seven year deep dive. After pouring over Jesus’ every interaction with another human being, he realized he was doing a much better job of studying Jesus’ words than he was following Jesus’ words and example. The honest and fearless revelations of Bennett’s own moral failures affirm he wrote this book for himself as much as for others. Love Like Jesus examines a variety of stories, examples, and research, including:

• Specific examples of how Jesus communicated God’s love to others.
• How Jesus demonstrated all five of Gary Chapman’s love languages (and how you can too).
• The story of how Billy Graham extended Christ’s extraordinary love and grace toward a man who misrepresented Jesus to millions.
• How to respond to critics the way Jesus did.
• How to love unlovable people the way Jesus did.
• How to survive a life of loving like Jesus (or how not to become a Christian doormat).
• How Jesus didn’t love everyone the same (and why you shouldn’t either).
• How Jesus guarded his heart by taking care of himself–he even napped–and why you should do the same.
• How Jesus loved his betrayer Judas, even to the very end.

With genuine unfiltered honesty, Love Like Jesus, shows you how to live a life according to God’s definition of success: A life of loving God well, and loving the people around you well too.

A life of loving like Jesus. (Kindle, hardcover, and paperback now available on Amazon and the ebook is now available on Google Play Books.)