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Story of a Nice Young Couple
by
Aaron White
(this article appeared in ALOVE at www1.salvationarmy.org.uk/alove)
What does the following fun story tell us about
sharing all we have with others?
So a married couple have just found a nice new Church to be a
part of. The people seem really friendly, the worship is
great, the food is good, and the Spirit really seems alive
there.
This particular Church is also on a bit of a sharing kick.
That is, people seem to be really into sharing what they have
with each other, from food to clothes to homes. Some people
even go so far as to sell off property and give the money to
the Church so they can redistribute it to the poor.
This seems pretty radical, but the married couple think it’s
noble, and, wanting to fit in, they decide to go for it. They
have a decent piece of property which they don’t need, so they
sell it off for a good price. They put a little money from the
sale on the side for themselves, and the husband brings the
rest to the Church leaders as an offering. All their friends
are wowed by their charity.
When the husband brings the money in, the Church leader asks
where the money came from. The husband explains that he and
his wife sold off their property, and that they wanted to give
the money from the sale to the Church for the poor.
“Is this all the money from the sale?” the Church leader asks.
“Yup,” replies the husband, “all the money from the sale is
here.”
The Church leader responds, “No, you’re lying. You kept some
for yourself.”
And so God strikes the husband dead.
Wait…what?
Uh, ok so later on the wife comes along, wanting to know
what’s keeping her husband. She meets up with the Church
leader, and asks him if he had already received their
sacrificial gift.
“Yeah, we did. Hey, the money you gave, was that all the money
from the sale of your property?”
“Sure was,” replied the wife. “Every penny.”
“Hmmm, that was your husband’s lie as well. He’s dead now
thanks to that lie. Bye.”
God strikes her dead too.
Hang on. That doesn’t seem…right.
They must have done something worse than just keeping some
money back and lying about it. God doesn’t just kill people
for stuff like that, or else everybody would be dead. Or is it
possible that we have an incomplete view of God?
The story, if you haven’t recognized it, is of Ananias and
Sapphira, and it can be found in Acts 5:1-11. God really does
kill two people in this story from the early Church for not
giving the full amount of the property sale to the Church and
then lying about it.
Some people call this a “text of terror”, propaganda used by
the early Church to ensure that people gave lots of money. One
person I know has even suggested that it wasn’t God but Peter
and his cohorts who murdered the couple behind closed doors
and then told everyone it was God. Frightening thought.
What was it about the couple’s sin that caused such a serious
consequence? It is of utmost importance here to note the
context. This is a story from the fledgling Christian
community, the very first expression of what it meant to be
followers of the Way of Christ. Remember the Acts 2 bit, where
everyone shared everything they had, and nobody lacked
anything? This was a vital piece of the puzzle, part of the
essential definition of what it meant to be in the “Christian”
community.
Ananias and Sapphira broke trust utterly with the community,
first by withholding money, then by lying about it. Sharing
everything you have with others requires a lot of trust. In
the early Acts community, new people were being added to the
fellowship everyday. Leaders were at times scrambling to
ensure that everyone was sharing properly and fairly with each
other, and that old patterns of greed and division didn’t take
root (Acts 6). So they had to be very intentional, disciplined
and careful about issues surrounding trust, sharing, and
redistribution of wealth. Failure to do so could very quickly
destroy any integrity they had, and could kill off any
opportunity they had for spreading the message of the Kingdom.
In other words, learning to share lives and thoughts and
material possessions and property and wealth was of primary
importance to the early Church.
It seems we have come a long way since then. Our primary
concerns are generally not how well we share what we have with
others, how fairly we distribute wealth, or how trustworthy we
are at taking care of each other and all the new people coming
into our fellowships. Rather, our concerns seem to be, from a
financial and resource standpoint anyways, more about
buildings, instruments, computers, staffing costs, and
structure. Most of the money given in tithes is used by the
Church internally, and this doesn’t really seem like the
original point of sharing possessions.
Is it possible that we have become guilty of being
untrustworthy with the money God has given us? Are we culpable
of withholding money that is supposed to be shared with the
community, particularly with those who lack? Are we all going
to be struck dead by God?
I confess, I don’t completely understand the severity of the
consequences for Ananias and Sapphira. It seems harsh, as if
they were being made into examples for
others (which seems likely really).
All I do know is that it proves that God takes this issue of
sharing with others very, very seriously, and that perhaps we
ought to be reevaluating how well we are sharing what we have
been given with others.
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