Today is a fascinating bit of reading!

This is my favorite part - probably because I am a bit of a nerd on this stuff.  Paul is arrested under charges of stirring up trouble by the Jews, same story, different day, and then he is brought in front of this tribune to be charged.  What’s funny is that none of these officers who were holding him really knew anything about who he was.  When we hear someone try to identify him, the tribune  wondered whether he was an Egyptian brigand who had recently stirred up a revolt in the desert. According to Josephus, per my study Bible, there had been an Egyptian false prophet who had led 30,000 men to the Mount of Olives in order to take Jerusalem; he promised that they would see the walls of the city fall down. The governor, Felix, killed or captured his followers, while the prophet himself managed to escape.  They wondered if Paul was this guy.  That’s funny!  AND, I love that this is just another corroborating piece of evidence that places this narrative in a time and place that could easily be identified and discredited IF there were reason to do so.

Then we see Paul request to speak to the people as he is being hauled off to be beaten, and he tells them the story of his conversion, illuminating the fact that he was just like them until he met Jesus - he points out that he was there over-looking the beating of Stephen.  But, again we see what is so common in these New Testament narratives, and what is unfortunately so true in our lives as well - that these people aren’t seeking truth, they are seeking to maintain their power, their order, the status quo.  Paul was a threat to them in this way.

And, in a dramatic fashion, we see Paul wrangle out of the beating, at least for now, by throwing in the fact that he is a Roman citizen, which stops the tribune in its tracks, because is means that there my be Roman legal process to take place before one of her citizens can be beaten like this.  So, Paul is safe, for now.

Today, I am reminded again of how important it is for us to remain truth-centered.  Even as Christians we can lose our curiosity and begin to ignore truth.  We fall pray to what is known as confirmation bias.  This occurs when, everywhere we look, we notice the things that confirm our opinions on a matter and we reject (consciously or subconsciously) everything that interferes with our opinion on that matter.  Here is the deal - as Christians, if we truly believe that God is Who He says He is, and that Jesus is our Savior, then we have nothing to fear.  We can be better than that - our faith is stronger than that.  We don’t have to fear science.  We don’t have to fear philosophy.  My favorite phrase, when I hear something that is a new discovery or a new idea, is simply, “Oh, so that’s how God did that.”.  At any rate, for today, I am going to pray that God would ground my faith in curiosity, that I would be assured of Jesus and comfortable enough with my faith to be open to ideas, and to learning.  In the end, God will ultimately connect the dots, and when that day comes, and all of our questions are answered, I am sure we’ll be very happy to have been on the side of faith rather than not.