Acts 11:1-18 | the Church Will Criticize You. Don't Criticize It.Sample

It can help to understand why some people in the church seem to miss the boat and become critical of new things. To be sure, it’s because they’re sinners and influenced by all kinds of competing things. But sometimes it’s because they think honoring God by doing what’s right matters, and not having the full picture or knowing the whole truth leads them to become suspicious of anything that seems to undermine the truth that they know.

It helps to understand the “new thing” mindset.

Imagine someone comes to Christ. Maybe they’ve been attending a church for a long time, or maybe not. But God grabs them, and they have a powerful experience with him. A song strikes them. A message speaks to them. A Bible reading or prayer intersects with them. God is speaking, and they lower their defenses. They see things differently. Things finally click. It’s almost like Paul when scales fell from his eyes, and for the first time, they feel like they can really see. If you’ve ever experienced something like that, you know how powerful and intimate and life-giving it can be.

When a person experiences something like this, they want to preserve that. They want to hold onto it and feel close to God again and again. Soon they start to think that whatever first led to it is a formula for intimacy with God, and sometimes psychologically it becomes a trigger for their emotions. Too often, those emotions are mistaken for the Holy Spirit and their subjective experience is mistaken for objective reality. It’s a dangerous path, because when the emotions dry up (which they are sure to do), that person jumps to false conclusions about not being obedient enough, not having truly repented, spiritual oppression, buffered by unknown sin, or that the Holy Spirit is just not moving in this church anymore. The irony is that people like this often seem to be (or claim to be) the most spiritual, but end up displaying the greatest degrees of emotional immaturity. Churches are filled with people like these. And they are often resistant to anything that derivates from how they once experienced God, or from what doesn’t trigger their emotions.

Here’s another scenario. Some people are afraid. Very afraid. They’re filled with uncertainty over life, the afterlife, God, where they stand with him, and what the truth actually is. They don’t really understand the Bible, or Christian teachings, let alone find themselves able to build their worldview on them. They just have a sense that it’s true. And they’re afraid to go looking, because they’re afraid of what they’ll find—either that they can’t defend what they believe and find it all to be a sham or that their certainty is built on sticks, or that God will confront them in some way that they don’t like. So they cling to what they know instead. That’s often the patterns and rituals in a church. Those patterns and rituals become substitutes for the Spirit, faith, and obedience. Or better put, they pour their faith into those patterns and rituals instead. Churches are filled with people like these. And they, too, are often resistant to anything that threatens their fragile faith.

Peter faced people who had experiences with God. Peter faced people whose faith was built on a certain system. It’s not that they weren’t prepared ahead of time for what was happening. John the Baptist himself said that Jesus was coming to baptize with the Holy Spirit, and Jesus himself said his apostles would be witnesses among the Gentiles. Maybe they just didn’t remember. Or maybe they didn’t get it. More likely they were trying to conform what God was doing to what the old patterns their people once experienced.

There’s an irony that earlier the apostles were brought before the Sanhedrin to answer for God’s new way in Jesus, and now they find themselves before believers for the exact same thing.

If you find yourself being criticized from within the church, maybe it’s helpful to remember the sage words of Gamaliel in Acts 5, who basically says: Who are we to stand in God’s way. If this is of human origin, it will fail, but if it’s from God, you won’t be able to stop it. You’ll only find yourselves fighting against God (Acts 5:34-39). In Peter’s case, the Acts 11 church came to see it.

Which leads to one final scenario. Maybe the people criticizing you have a point (even if they are criticizing you wrongly). Just because I think it’s true doesn’t make it true, and just because I think it’s good doesn’t make it good. And just because we’re on the right path doesn’t mean we’re always walking it rightly. So be discerning. We can often learn a lot from those who criticize us. Done rightly, spiritual correction and guidance is a role the church is supposed to play.