Daily Thoughts from Acts: Misunderstood (Acts 14:8-18)

Now at Lystra there was a man sitting who could not use his feet. He was crippled from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul speaking. And Paul, looking intently at him and seeing that he had faith to be made well, said in a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.” And he sprang up and began walking. And when the crowds saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in Lycaonian, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, Hermes, because he was the chief speaker.  And the priest of Zeus, whose temple was at the entrance to the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates and wanted to offer sacrifice with the crowds.

But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their garments and rushed out into the crowd, crying out, “Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, of like nature with you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” Even with these words they scarcely restrained the people from offering sacrifice to them.  (Acts 14:8-18 ESV)

Can a miracle backfire?  In the cultures Paul and Barnabas encounter there are many who worship idols and believe the gods visit men and do miracles.  Paul sees that a man has faith to be made well.  Like Peter, who saw the lame man sitting at the gate to the temple and looked intently at him, Paul senses from the Spirit that this man can be healed.  God can heal without a person’s faith, but generally speaking He looks for faith in a person before He heals them.  This is because the function of the miracle is to encourage faith.

When the people try to offer sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas, Paul tries to help them see that they are mere men trying to turn them from idols to the living God, the God who does these miracles through them.  They appeal to their innate sense that the true God has given witness to Himself through the good gifts He has given to sustain our lives.  If Paul was after personal gain he could have used this situation to garner money and praise and control over this population, much like the sorcerer Simon among the Samaritans (ch 8).

In fact, in Thessalonica, a city Paul will visit on his second missionary journey, he was accused of preaching Christ for personal gain and has to defend himself to the believers there to give them ammunition against their detractors (1 Thessalonians 2).  In Corinth, also a city visited on the second journey, because he does not take any offerings from the Corinthians some accuse him of not being worth the money (1 Corinthians 9).

Everything we do as believers is subject to misinterpretation by others for several reasons:

1. The nature of human sin is that we fear we cannot trust God to meet our deepest needs, nor can we trust anyone else, so we are always expecting the “other shoe to drop.”
2. The gospel makes sinners feel guilty and to deflect that guilt we shift blame to the ones preaching the gospel.
3. In cross-cultural settings we are up against social norms and religious norms we might not even be aware of, like those Paul and Barnabas encountered, that determine how our gospel is perceived.

We cannot entirely minimize these factors so we will have to put up with being misunderstood and misinterpreted and will, like Paul and Barnabas, have to work to gain understanding.  It will be required in the most basic evangelizing of a friend to the more complex evangelizing of a foreign culture.

In 1962, Don Richardson went to live with the Sawi people of what was then Dutch New Guinea. The Sawi culture held to an ideal called ‘tuwi asonai man’, which means ‘to fatten with friendship for unexpected slaughter’. According to this ideal, a man who could trick an enemy into thinking they were friends only to kill him unexpectedly was called a ‘legend maker’, which was a term of high honor and praise among the Sawi.

After Richardson had learned enough of the Sawi language, he shared the story of Jesus. The Sawi were impressed by how well Judas Iscariot earned the trust of Jesus only to betray him to his death. Judas, in their minds, was a great ‘legend maker’.

Frustrated by his inability to explain the gospel as well as by the fact that his presence had escalated violence by causing different groups to live closer together, Richardson told the Sawi that he was going to leave. Worried about losing their only source of medicine and steel axes, the Sawi told Richardson that they would make peace. Richardson doubted the possibility of peace, but they explained a custom of exchanging infants between warring villages. Each infant was known as a ‘Peace Child’, and they assured Richardson that as long as the Peace Child was alive, there would be no more war.

Richarson telling the Sawi about God’s Peace Child

Richardson stayed with the Sawi and told them that Jesus is God’s Peace Child and God’s guarantee of eternal peace since Jesus lives forever. Many of the Sawi were transformed by this message, receiving God’s forgiveness and abandoning their treacherous ways.

From <http://pngboyd.blogspot.com/2011/08/judas-iscariot-cultural-hero.html>