When the Church Was a Family

Recapturing Jesus' Vision for Authentic Christian Community

Joseph H. Hellerman

• Publisher: B&H Books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781433668432
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Spiritual formation occurs primarily in the context of community. But as the modern cultural norm of what social scientists call "radical American individualism" extends itself, many Christians grow lax in their relational accountability to the church. Faith threatens to become an "I" not "us, " a "my God" not "our God" concern.

When the Church Was a Family calls believers back to the wisdom of the first century, examining the early Christian church from a sociohistorical perspective and applying the findings to the evangelical church in America today. With confidence, author Joseph Hellerman writes intentionally to traditional church leaders and emerging church visionaries alike, believing what is detailed here about Jesus' original vision for authentic Christian community will deeply satisfy the relational longings of both audiences.

Chapter One

THE GROUP COMES FIRST

At these [temple] sacrifices prayers for the welfare of the community must take precedence over those for ourselves; for we are born for fellowship, and he who sets its claims above his private interests is specially acceptable to God.

(Josephus, Contra Apion 2.197)

The movie Titanic went down in history as one of the costliest and most lucrative films ever produced. The epic production also won eleven Oscars. Moviegoers sat utterly spellbound by the $200 million worth of special effects and attention to detail. Among the technological marvels that garnered the film the award for Best Visual Effects was a near-perfect 1/20 scale replica of the Titanic. But visual fireworks alone did not propel Titanic to the center stage of the 1998 Academy Awards. Only a simple but powerful love story could do that, and the love story from the movie Titanic colorfully illustrates what happens when our Western individualistic relational priorities collide with the values of more traditional societies.

The interaction between Titanic's main characters, Jack and Rose, epitomizes Western romance at its best. Jack is a scrappy but charming street kid who is on the great ship only because he won a boarding pass in a poker game. Rose belongs to the upper echelon of British society. She is engaged to be married to a man from her own social stratum with whom she is traveling in first-class accommodations. The story line makes it perfectly clear that Rose has no affection for her fiancé. In fact, the fellow is portrayed as an arrogant, obnoxious individual.

In a memorable scene Rose's mother reminds her daughter that the arranged marriage is in the best interest of her family. It seems that Rose's father died after squandering away his fortune, so for Rose's mother and her family the impending marriage represents the only hope of maintaining their wealth and preserving their social status. Rose has been set up with a man for whom she has absolutely no affection in order to guarantee an honorable future for her extended family.

But then one evening Rose meets Jack on the deck of the ship, and the encounter ignites the flame of a romantic fling that serves as the main story line for the rest of the movie. Rose is caught in a quandary. She loves Jack, but she is engaged to a highly unappealing man whom she is obligated to marry for the sake of her family. Whom will Rose choose?

Jack, of course. If Rose had chosen otherwise, the movie simply would not have worked for the tens of millions of American viewers who followed the tragic tale. We are quite unmoved by the potential social dilemma confronting Rose's extended family. Rather, our sympathies lie with the heroine's own personal satisfaction. As I watched Titanic, I could almost hear the thoughts running through the heads of the viewers in the theater: Forget your family's fortune, Rose! Ignore your mother's wishes! Dump the rich jerk! Follow your heart! Go after Jack!

What I want us to see here is that Titanic's love story would not be nearly as well received in cultures like those of the New Testament world. If Titanic were shown in first-century Palestine with Aramaic subtitles, the audience would be utterly appalled to discover that Rose would even consider sacrificing the good of her extended family for her own relational satisfaction. They would find Rose's fling with Jack both risky and foolish. First-century Jews would expect Rose to marry the rich fellow and endure a life of emotional dissatisfaction, if such an arrangement could somehow preserve the honor and social-status of Rose's extended family.

The Group Comes First

The markedly different reactions to a love story like the one portrayed in Titanic illustrate the most important difference between modern American culture and the social world of New Testament antiquity. We are individualists. Our personal goals and individual satisfaction take first priority when we make critical life decisions. But the peoples of the ancient world exhibit what cultural anthropologists call a collectivist view of reality. Another way of saying this is to refer to the biblical world as a strong-group society. I will use the expressions "collectivist" and "strong-group" interchangeably throughout this book.

What this means is that for people in the world of the New Testament, the welfare of the groups to which they belonged took priority over their own individual happiness and relational satisfaction. This explains why someone viewing Titanic in first-century Palestine would expect Rose to go ahead and marry her wealthy fiancé. The social status of her family would take precedence over Rose's individual relational satisfaction. This chapter is dedicated to helping us grasp this crucial difference between the ancient collectivist mind-set and our own Western individualistic (weak-group) worldview.

John F. Kennedy captivated the audience at his 1961 presidential inauguration when he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."¹ This memorable quote continues to inspire a half-century later. But few of us in America actually buy into the strong-group values reflected in Kennedy's lofty challenge—not in our personal lives anyway. Think for a moment about how you relate to the various institutions or groups that make up much of your daily life—your employer, your school, and especially your church. Most of us do not ask what we can do for these institutions. Rather, we want to know what they can do for us.

I view my employer as a source of income to meet my family's material needs, and since I am fortunate enough to enjoy what I do, my job is a source of personal satisfaction. Although I am grateful for my job as a professor, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about my loyalty to Biola University. And what about my students? I suspect that they view the university in similarly utilitarian terms, as a place to get the education they need to qualify them to reach their individual vocational goals. And church? Well, the purpose of church, of course, is to help me continue to grow in my personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Or so I have been trained by my culture to believe. It is precisely because you and I have been socialized from childhood to view the world from an individualistic perspective that the attitudes outlined above feel so normal and natural to us. We establish our individual goals in life, and then we utilize the various groups and institutions in society to facilitate the realization of these personal goals and objectives. This is simply the way life works—in modern America at least.

To people in the New Testament world, President Kennedy's exhortation—"ask what you can do for your country"—would have served as more than an inspiring challenge. It would have represented an accurate description of daily life. People in the ancient world automatically assumed that the groups to which they belonged took priority over their lives as individuals. This was true whether the group in view was their nation, family, synagogue, or church.

Below is a helpful description of strong-group thinking that will serve us well throughout our discussion. What you are about to read accurately reflects the strong-group perspective of the ancient world. It also characterizes the attitudes of people in a number of traditional, non-Western cultures around the world even today. And, as we will soon discover, the quotation properly reflects the value orientation that God desires of His children as we consider our relationships with others in His family, the church. Take a moment to reflect carefully on this description of the collectivist mind-set, paying particular attention to the expressions in italics:

[In a strong-group society] the person perceives himself or herself to be a member of a group and responsible to the group for his or her actions, destiny, career, development, and life in general. Correspondingly he/she perceives other persons primarily in terms of the groups to which they belong. The individual person is embedded in the group and is free to do what he or she feels right and necessary only if in accord with group norms and only if the action is in the group's best interest. The group has priority over the individual member, and it may use objects in the environment, other groups of people in the society, and the members of the group itself to facilitate group oriented goals and objectives.²

A person who perceives himself primarily in terms of the group to which he belongs—family, religious sect, ethnic group, or village community—behaves in a strong-group way; that is, he will gladly put the goals of his group ahead of his own personal desires.

The strategy of Rose's mother in the movie Titanic—to marry her daughter into a wealthy family in order to preserve the social status of her own extended family—perfectly illustrates this kind of thinking. This "group comes first" social value must serve as the first focal point for our look at collectivist thinking. It represents the clearest and most immediately accessible window through which to gain some perspective on strong-group convictions and behavior, and to gain a new appreciation for the relational solidarity that characterized the New Testament church. We turn now to consider several examples of strong-group behavior, from ancient Mediterranean society and from collectivist peoples around the world today.

Josephus at the Gates of Jerusalem

It was AD 70. The sun was setting over the city of David as another day drew to a close. Josephus tried to wrap his tunic a little tighter around himself—even in early July those Palestinian nights can be rather chilly. It was only a couple of years ago, Josephus wistfully recalled, that he had been an esteemed Jewish priest, highly respected both by the people at large and especially by his fellow elite citizens in Jerusalem.

How things had changed! It all began with a hopeless peasant revolt that soon escalated into war with Rome. Along the way Josephus had seen his fortunes decline one after another. Initially, he was recruited to serve as the general over Jewish resistance troops in Galilee. That lasted only until Rome marshaled its legions and came storming in from the north, destroying village after village, including Josephus's stronghold, the town of Jotapata.

Only fools fight with Rome, Josephus ruefully reflected, and now, as he looked back, he felt lucky that he had survived at all. Most of his fellow soldiers in Galilee were brutally massacred. Josephus was put in chains and sent southward with the Roman military machine to set up camp outside Jerusalem.

It had now been nearly three months since Titus and his legions (with Josephus and other prisoners in tow) arrived at the gates of Jerusalem—plenty of time for the Romans to erect their siege engines around the walls of the Holy City. As Josephus bundled himself up against the cool night air, he knew that it was only a matter of time. The enraged legions never failed to take a city.

That evening—like every other evening for the past three months—Josephus pleaded with his besieged Jewish brothers to come to their senses and willingly open the city gates to the Romans in order to avoid a battle they stood no chance of winning:

I know that I have a mother, a wife, a not ignoble family, and an ancient and illustrious house involved in these perils; and maybe you think that it is on their account that my advice is offered. Slay them, take my blood as the price of your own salvation! I too am prepared to die, if my death will lead to your learning wisdom.³

The story does not end on a happy note. The Jewish zealots rejected his pleas, and Josephus soon saw his beloved city destroyed and thousands of his fellow Jews slaughtered by the Roman army. But the strong-group nature of Josephus's response to the impending calamity should not be missed. "Take my blood," he exclaims, "as the price of your own salvation."

Josephus, in true collectivist fashion, was willing to die if that was what it took for the Jewish rebels to "wise up" and surrender to Rome. He was ready to sacrifice his life for the welfare of his group—the Jewish nation. Another first-century Jewish writer expressed comparable convictions when he exclaimed, "I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from the Messiah for the benefit of my brothers, my countrymen by physical descent" (Rom 9:3).

Take another look at the quote from Josephus at the heading of the chapter:

At these [temple] sacrifices prayers for the welfare of the community must take precedence over those for ourselves; for we are born for fellowship, and he who sets its claims above his private interests is specially acceptable to God.⁴

For this first-century Jewish historian, a person who sets the welfare of the community "above his private interests"—that is, a person with a strong-group worldview—"is specially acceptable to God." It is crystal clear where Josephus's priorities were; they were with the group. Josephus, writing around AD 100, claimed to have lived out this "group first" ethic when he pleaded with his fe...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Chapter One: The Group Comes First
• Chapter Two: Family in the New Testament World
• Chapter Three: Jesus’ New Group
• Chapter Four: The Churches of Paul
• Chapter Five: The Church in the Roman World
• Chapter Six: Salvation as a Community-Creating Event
• Chapter Seven: Life Together in the Family of God
• Chapter Eight: Decision Making in the Family of God
• Chapter Nine: Leadership in the Family of God
• Conclusion