Acting up

Confirmation bias. There’s a term for our times. Confirmation bias: the process by which any adolescent brought before the bishop for laying on of hands and anointing will, within months of her confirmation stop coming to church. I’m tempted to say ‘that’s the episcopate for you’ but if I did say that,  that would be me falling victim to confirmation bias of a different kind: the tendency to search for, interpret, favour and recall information in a way that confirms or supports your prior beliefs, values, or decisions. If that’s too big a sentence to take in this time on a Sunday, just bring to mind any Facebook group or Twitter thread and you’ll find there a drip buttie of thickly larded confirmation bias.

If the world were a very simple place and our entire life limited to gathering tubers and berries, fighting our neighbours and decorating the cave- just an ordinary day in Beddington- then, maybe confirmation bias could help us through the day; after all, we don’t want to have to be considering everything from every possible standpoint every time we have to make a decision. Those berries won’t pick themselves! You know what you like and you like what you know; there’s nothing more we need to know. That’s that sorted. Fortunately, it’s been several thousand years since the bulk of humanity were cave dwelling hunter gatherers; unfortunately nobody told our brains, which merrily maintains your neolithic ancestor alive and well and in your head, bringing with her all sorts of caveman kit, including a bios running confirmation bias. It seeps into all our thinking and it takes determined effort not to let it dominate the day; sad, because if there’s one thing our brains really don’t like it’s having to make an effort. So we carry confirmation bias round with us everyday because it’s easier that way and it affects us in a lot more ways than making people really annoying on social media. It affects our moods, our mental health, our relationships significant and not, our life decisions, our voting behaviour, our economic activity and, of course, our religion. 

Why else do you think Christians are pretty much permanently at each other’s throats, doggedly pursuing intractable arguments that only seem to resolve when we separate into new denominations and start a different argument? Are you the People’s Front of Judea? Always arguing, always disagreeing, always splitting apart. Yet all Christians base their faith on exactly the same set of Scriptures. We all read the same Bible, we all take it seriously, we all accord it the same prominent place in our faith, and still we can’t even agree on the colour of the vestments the priest, or pastor or presbyter or minister  or Dave (if it’s that kind of church) should wear, nevermind the vastly more important aspects of our belief. We all follow the same Jesus, read the same holy book, and come to wildly different, mutually incompatible conclusions.

How come?

Every time anyone reads the Scriptures, despite appearances sometimes to the contrary, every time they do that, they bring their brain along. It’s really non-negotiable. And along with the grey stuff comes confirmation bias. 

This kicks in because every time somebody reads the Bible, they interpret it. Every time, because the scriptures do not  have a plain sense. They do not speak plainly: they ask questions. ‘What does this mean?’ which only really makes sense as ‘What does this mean to me?’, meaning interpretation, because there is no letter of Paul to the Church in Beddington.

So, there is no time when we read the scriptures that we do not interpret. So, because the scriptures matter,  it matters how you choose to interpret. And it matters what you choose to interpret.

If nothing else, someone who isn’t you will have decided which parts of the scripture you will hear, if you mainly hear them read out in a congregation- which is what they were written for. If you have just picked up a Bible yourself you still won’t read all of it: you’ll select the more interesting bits: the tales of Moses parting the Red Sea, Solomon cutting a baby in two, the fiery serpent and the talking ass (even Burroughs read his Bible); anything with Jesus in- such are the interesting bits. Unless you’re a very niche academic you won’t linger long if at all on a genealogy or an ancient criminal code. So even if you select what you read you’ll have to interpret it. If you’re not really careful– and none of us ever is– all your confirmation biases come along for the ride as well and you’ll end up with an interpretation that is at best partial – in both senses of the word. That is, you’re only getting part of the story and a biased one at that. The scriptures are special but they are not specially protected from misinterpretation; indeed, they are especially vulnerable to it.

And so, to alight on was is our companion Scripture for these Sundays of Eastertide the Acts of the Apostles. It’s the star of this sermon because never has a book been more misinterpreted than Acts.

Now Acts sticks out in the Bible. The tale of the very earliest days of the Christian church, it’s very much a one of a kind, there’s nothing remotely similar to it elsewhere in the Scriptures, despite it being penned by the same chap who wrote Luke’s Gospel. It abruptly changes focus part the way through. Acts starts with the activities of the eleven (soon to be twelve again) Apostles in Jerusalem, adds the doings of a couple of deacons, a mix of miracles and preaching, and then all of a sudden the book looses interest in Peter and it’s all about Paul. Jesus has one or two brief cameos in the early chapters, but for most of the book God is represented by the Holy Spirit. Apart from some healing, the miracles relayed are unlike those in the gospels; instead of the deep multilayered symbolism we find with Jesus’s miracles here, they seem crude, gauche even: Judas drops dead and spills his guts; Ananias and Sapphira don’t pay their tithes and drop dead; Paul is bitten by a viper and doesn’t drop dead.  As I said, it’s very much, sui generis, one of a kind.

And it’s all ours in the Eastertide. Those of you with long memories will remember the reading from last week:

Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers… …Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

It’s close to the start of the book,  the very earliest church in Jerusalem. Who wouldn’t want to be in a church like that? It’s succeeding and growing; indeed, it’s so successful it has to think about formal ministry, dividing tasks between  apostles (praying and teaching) and deacons (preaching and looking after people). 

Here is where perhaps the most common misinterpretation of Acts has its root. You hear it a lot in Christian circles.  It goes something like this. The church of Acts is in the Bible and is therefore it is a blueprint for how a church should be. So a church is only doing what God wants if it is growing, daily adding to the number who are being saved. Look at Acts: growth is what God wants, and growth means you’re doing the right thing and God is blessing you. And then, if you follow the Acts blueprint your church will grow.

I don’t know about you, but I think this is one of those partial interpretations we considered earlier: a combination of approaching the Bible as if it is a Highway Code for the spirit and confirmation bias. We’re only getting part of the story and a biased one at that.

Because, there’s another part of the story, one, rather neatly, we have in today’s reading from Acts. There is described the death of St Stephen, first of Christian martyrs, lynched by an enraged mob of religious enthusiasts. What comes next is a ferocious persecution of the church, with more murders of Christians. The church is scattered and the faithful dispersed from the Holy City. Suddenly less successful.

This is a much less attractive blueprint.  If you follow Acts your church will grow. Great. That’s only part of the story, Because, if you follow Acts  you will also end up stoned in the most unpleasant sense of the word and scattered to the four winds.

So, which is the more authentic church? Which is the blueprint provided by the Spirit? The one with the relentless growth agenda? Or the one that perescution is driving apart? 

Answer? Well, both. And there are other authentic ways to be church too.

Like any part of the Bible, Acts teaches us, tells us about God, but we’re not being tutored to replicate what we read there; we’re being shown skills and principles which will allow us to act for ourselves. Musicians study Bach to learn harmony;  but they don’t then just produce exact copies of his chorales every time they write music.  Acts is not a manual it is a story  and it teaches us in the way any story does: with our imaginations– putting ourselves in the picture; with our creativity– we ask what would we do; and with truths that are universal not particular- how can I take what I’ve learned here and make it something new.

That ‘Lord daily adding to their number’ part of Acts describes nothing more out of the ordinary than people being faithful. ‘Day by day… they devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles, to breaking bread and to prayers.’  Two thousand years on we too can be faithful, in our own time and place and way. We will almost certainly never express our faithfulness in the way St Stephen did. But two thousand years later we too can be faithful in our own time and place and way. Because it is the church that is faithful that is the authentic one.