Acts 6: Some things to some people

I'm sometimes depressed by my failure to live up to Paul's line about being "all things to all people" (1 Cor 9:22). Which is silly, because Paul himself says that there are varieties of gifts, service, and activities amongst Christians (1 Cor 12).

The Twelve acknowledge this reality when trouble arises regarding the care of widows in the early church. They decide: "It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word" (6:2-4).

Different roles for different people. The church is not a monolith; rather, as G.K. Chesterton wrote in "Orthodoxy," it is a fantastic balancing act:

"Because a man prayed and fasted on the Northern snows, flowers could be flung at his festival in the Southern cities; and because fanatics drank water on the sands of Syria, men could still drink cider in the orchards of England. This is what makes Christendom at once so much more perplexing and so much more interesting than the Pagan empire; just as Amiens Cathedral is not better but more interesting than the Parthenon. ... Patriotism is a perfect example of this deliberate balancing of one emphasis against another emphasis. The instinct of the Pagan empire would have said, 'You shall all be Roman citizens, and grow alike; let the German grow less slow and reverent; the Frenchmen less experimental and swift.' But the instinct of Christian Europe says, 'Let the German remain slow and reverent, that the Frenchman may the more safely be swift and experimental. We will make an equipoise out of these excesses. The absurdity called Germany shall correct the insanity called France.'"

(Image: G.K. Chesterton, photo by Alvin Langdon Coburn, 1905)