Because Päivi Räsänen dared to quote from the Bible, all hell broke loose. For simply highlighting what the word of God has taught concerning homosexuality, the police began going after her just as passionately as Saul had gone after the early follower of Jesus. But now, after four long years, it seems she finally has been vindicated. After years of grief and turmoil, she is now hopefully finished with this ugly secular witch-hunt. 

The timing is interesting: In my morning perusal of Scripture I have again been reading about the amazing things God was doing with the early church as recorded in the book of Acts. The new believers in Jesus were persecuted terribly by the powers that be. Saul was one of those who was very eager to hunt down these pesky believers in Yeshua.
Yet he too had an encounter with the risen Christ, and that put an end to his anti-Christian bigotry. As I just posted on the social media: There are many biblical moments which would have been amazing to witness. The scenes of the newly converted Saul would have been one of them:
And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord. (Acts 9:26-28)
Imagine the big grin on Paul’s face as he hugged the disciples and told them, ‘Hey, I am one of you now – I am a follower of Yeshua!’ But of course persecution continued, as it has for 2000 years now. But the church grew and grew. It spread throughout Europe, and we saw it becoming the real cradle of Western civilisation.
We had the Reformation, the great revivals and awakenings. So much has happened over the centuries. But sadly we have basically gone full circle since then. Europe today is almost as pagan as it was back when Saul was head-hunting believers. It certainly is the most secular and anti-Christian continent on the planet. It is in desperate need of being re-evangelised.
Because Europe has rejected what made it great – its Christian past – we see more Saul-types today doing all they can to silence Christians and intimidate those of the faith. There are countless examples of this. Let me highlight just one of them – but with a terrific outcome.
Over four years ago I wrote about one such case. It involved a Finnish politician who was being hounded by the powers that be because of her faith. Because Päivi Räsänen dared to quote from the Bible, all hell broke loose. For simply highlighting what the word of God has taught concerning homosexuality, the police began going after her just as passionately as Saul had gone after the early follower of Jesus.
In my piece I called her “the Finnish Israel Folau.” I concluded my article about her at the time with these words:
In my books Päivi Räsänen is a real champion. We certainly need more bold and sold-out Christian politicians like her. She puts to shame all the limp-wristed and cowardly Christians who refuse to take a stand and speak out, be it in parliament or in any other public forums. Please pray for brave Päivi. She is a wonderful witness for Christ. God bless you Päivi. https://billmuehlenberg.com/2019/09/16/quoting-from-the-bible-will-get-you-into-trouble/
But now, after four long years, it seems she finally has been vindicated. After years of grief and turmoil, she is now hopefully finished with this ugly secular witch-hunt.
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Because of the distinctive lives of many early Christians, and because of the early church’s focus on teaching and training its people in the basics of Christian theology and the requirements of Christian ethics, many in the surrounding culture were drawn to these strange and counter-culture people. May we live strangely attractive lives as well.

I’ve never been asked this question, but apparently it’s been quite the trend on social media. It turns out that 21st century men (and women?) think about the Roman Empire quite a bit. The reasons vary, but Christians, at least, should think more often than they do about how their ancestors in the faith lived, worked, and worshiped in the latter days of the Roman Empire.
Historians and scholars have long puzzled over how a movement led by marginalized Jews could have eventually overwhelmed one of the largest and longest-lived empires the world has ever seen. Others have pointed out the similarities between our cultural moment and the end of the Roman Empire. By examining some of the ways that the early church defined itself in the late Roman world, Christians today can learn valuable lessons for how to live in our own rapidly re-paganizing culture.
We often forget how odd the Christian movement was. Historian Larry Hurtado reminds us: “In the eyes of many of that time, early Christianity was odd, bizarre, in some ways even dangerous. For one thing, it did not fit what ‘religion’ was for people then. Indicative of this, Roman-era critics designated it as a perverse ‘superstition’” (Destroyer of the Gods, 1-2). Yet, this strange new religion quickly grew and conquered the Roman Empire. Early Christianity was simultaneously “perverse” and strangely attractive. What made the early Christian movement so attractive? What can Christians today learn from our fathers and mothers in the faith?
Faithfulness–Not Relevance
The early Christians focused more on being faithful, and in creating a distinct culture, than on being “winsome” or “relevant.” In his book, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, historian Alan Kreider argues that several factors set apart the early Christian movement, and ultimately led to its surprising growth. Of primary importance was an emphasis on patience. Kreider writes:
Patience was not a virtue dear to most Greco-Roman people, and it has been of little interest to scholars of early Christianity. But it was centrally important to the early Christians. They talked about patience and wrote about it; it was the first virtue about which they wrote a treatise, and they wrote no fewer than three treatises on it. Christian writers called patience the “highest virtue,” “the greatest of all virtues,” the virtue that was “peculiarly Christian.” The Christians believed that God is patient and that Jesus visibly embodied patience. And they concluded they, trusting in God, should be patient–not controlling events, not anxious or in a hurry, and never using force to achieve their ends (1-2).
Perhaps paradoxically, this emphasis on patience led to high standards of life and morality in the early church, which created a distinctive Christian subculture. This is bound up in what Kreider terms habitus. Habitus is “reflexive bodily behavior” (Patient Ferment, 2). Early Christians focused less on winning arguments and more on winning others through their habitually patient behavior: “When challenged about their ideas, Christians pointed to their actions. They believed that their habitus, their embodied behavior, was eloquent. The behavior said what they believed; it was an enactment of their message” (Patient Ferment, 2).
Thirdly, Kreider notes the importance of catechesis and worship. “The early Christians were uncommonly committed to forming the habitus of their members” (Patient Ferment, 2). Pagans needed to be re-trained, and needed to develop different habits. On this score, the early church was probably too restrictive. New converts entered the catechumenate, a time of training and probation, which could last years. They were excluded from the latter part of the church’s worship service (the prayers and Eucharist). No doubt this increased the sense of awe and mystery, and created a sense of anticipation, but this already displays the unhealthy tendency to split the church into two tiers of those who are more holy/advanced Christians and those less committed or less mature. Our churches today veer to the opposite extreme, welcoming everyone with no standards at all for admission and inclusion. Surely there is wisdom in walking between these extremes. Groups like the Catechesis Institute are seeking to renew and apply the ancient patterns of catechesis to the contemporary church. Learning from the past requires creativity–not just a cut-and-paste approach. As Mark Twain put it: “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.”
Fourth, the early church embodied what Kreider calls “ferment.” Although this was not an early Christian term or concept, it helpfully captures aspects of how the early church grew and how it interacted with the surrounding culture. “It was not susceptible to human control, and its pace could not be sped up. But in the ferment there was a bubbling energy–a bottom-up inner life–that had immense potential” (Patient Ferment, 3).
Kreider’s book is full of insights about how the early Christians lived their lives differently than the surrounding Greco-Roman culture, and how their radically counter-cultural lifestyle (“habitus”) was attractive and compelling to their pagan neighbors. Here’s one of the key takeaways: “Unlike many churches today, the third-century churches described by the Apostolic Tradition did not try to grow by making people feel welcome and included. Civic paganism did that. In contrast, the churches were hard to enter. They didn’t grow because of their cultural accessibility; they grew because they required commitment to an unpopular God who didn’t require people to perform cultic acts correctly but instead equipped them to live in a way that was richly unconventional” (Patient Ferment, 149). The Gospel calls us to live in a way that is noticeably different from our non-Christian neighbors. Like the early church, this will be either attractive, or will bring persecution. The early church can remind us of how to be faithful in both eventualities.
Revolutionary Sex
Another aspect of the early Christian witness is even more relevant to our hedonistic culture. In a world of sexual license, the early church preached–and tried to enforce–sexual purity and abstinence. In opposition to the pagans, Christians taught women and men that sex was a God-given gift, to be exercised only in marriage. Pagan cultures, as with most non-Christian cultures throughout history, had a double-standard. The purity of women was closely guarded, while men had much more freedom. Slaves, including children, were at the mercy of their master’s lusts. The first sexual revolution was the Christian moral revolution, as Kyle Harper points out: “The heightened place of sexuality in the overarching structure of morality, the respect for the human dignity of all persons, and the insistence on the value of the transcendent and sacred over the secular and the civic—these all went hand in hand in the growth of Christian culture” (“The Sexual Revolution”).
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It is clear that scripture calls us to a higher standard in setting goals. The goals we set as Christians must be in accordance with God’s will and under his leadership. So, in James 4, James is not saying that we should not set goals. What he is saying is that we should set goals and make plans as God leads, but hold them loosely: “Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that’” (Jam. 4:15). Herein lies the balance of the Christian life: although Paul set Christ-centered goals and developed specific plans to achieve them, he was also sensitive to the Lord altering his plans.

If you knew without a doubt that you could not fail in accomplishing one major goal, what goal would you set for your life?
I have heard this question for years in business circles when the subject of goal-setting comes up. It’s also one I think about between Christmas and the new year as I pray and think through what God wants me to accomplish in the coming year.
For those who have put their trust in the Lord, maybe a better question is, “Should we as Christians set goals?”
Over the years, I have heard many answers to that question. In the recent past, the answer from the church has usually been “no.” I have heard sermons expounding the dangers of fleshly zeal tied to spiritual goals. James is often quoted to support this argument:
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” (Jam. 4:13-15 ESV)
Yet today if you google the question, “Should we as Christians set goals?” the search yields about 159,000,000 results, many of which provide detailed instruction on how to make your goals a reality.
Two Ways to Look at Setting Goals
With goal-setting, like many issues, it’s easy to fall into two dangerous extremes.
The first extreme is to choose not to have any goals or plans. These people aim at nothing and hit it with amazing consistency. They claim to always want to be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, who they suggest only leads people in a spontaneous way. Although this may seem spiritual, they are not really using their God-given intellect to set good goals, plans, and decisions.
The second extreme is when people develop such rigid goals and plans that there is no room for the daily guidance of the Holy Spirit.
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