Wednesday, October 17, 2007

October 15 Meeting: Poverty and the Poor in the New Testament

At our October 15 meeting, we concluded our series of readings on "Poverty and the Poor" by looking at the following passage from Acts 4:32-37:

32 Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. 33With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. 35They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. 36There was a Levite, a native of Cyprus, Joseph, to whom the apostles gave the name Barnabas (which means ‘son of encouragement’). 37He sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.


Again, those who were there, please make use of the comments feature to convey some of what arose from our discussion of the text.

11 comments:

UVABaseball said...

I wasn't at the meeting so I don't know what all was said, but I had one or two things I want to throw out there just in case.
First, this is a special scenario. The "early church" had just began, maybe within the past few months of this account. People were flocking to this new sect of Judaism in droves. Some were from the city, some not; they left wherever they were to join in. Many of the people were also dirt poor, since these were the ones Jesus put a lot of focus on. So, very new group, little organization, and many, many people, a good bit of whom were poor. Great shortage of resources and a way of supporting people. So the solution was to share everything.
The selling of property and the pooling of money is not to say that this early group advocated communism or socialism. This is not an economic story. The story is showing what great lengths the believers would go to to help out fellow believers. No one was forced to pool money; they just did out of love for their fellow people. Money and personal property did not take precedence over others' wellbeing.
This leads to the second part: the money was used IN the group, the story did not have them giving away to others who were in need but not in the new sect, but those in the sect who were in need. So looking at this, did the early church see it as more important to help out those that believed as they did over those who had just as much need but did not believe as they?

家出 said...

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