Acts and the Two Halves of Life
some thoughts on the expanding circles in Acts
During the first half of life, we construct a version of ourselves based upon our tribe’s (family, church, school, community, etc.) standards and expectations. After we experience extreme love or severe loss, we have an opportunity to move into the second half of life when our false self can be challenged and we begin to discover who we are and who God made us to be.
In this article, I’ll be examining the church in book of Acts, it’s two main characters, and what Luke can teach us about the two halves of life.
But first, a quote from the Center of Action and Contemplation:
It was Carl Jung who first popularized the phrase “the two halves of life” to describe the two major tangents and tasks of any human life. The first half of life is spent building our sense of identity, importance, and security—what I would call the false self and Freud might call the ego self. Jung emphasizes the importance and value of a healthy ego structure. But inevitably you discover, often through failure or a significant loss, that your conscious self is not all of you, but only the acceptable you. You will find your real purpose and identity at a much deeper level than the positive image you present to the world.
In the second half of life, the ego still has a place, but now in the service of the True Self or soul, your inner and inherent identity. Your ego is the container that holds you all together, so now its strength is an advantage. Someone who can see their ego in this way is probably what we mean by a “grounded” person.
Acts: A Story of a Young Movement Finding Its Way
Acts 1
In the opening chapter of Acts, Luke begins by recounting the events of Jesus’s ascension because, as John tells us, if Jesus did not go away, the Spirit could not come (John 16:7). To us, this doesn’t make much sense. How much better would it have been had Jesus stayed on earth and led his church from a cathedral or a mountaintop monastery?
Yet, as God elected in Genesis 1, we human beings are given the task to body forth the image of God in the world. As we learn at a very young age, and probably never stop learning, we have to grow up, learn, and adapt.
And so Jesus ascends, but he doesn't leave them alone for long.
10 days later, on Pentecost, this fledgling group of disciples who were filled with questions and doubts, received the wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit was poured out upon these 120 followers of Jesus so that they may fulfill the mission he gave them: to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth (Acts 1:8).
Acts 2
The revolution began splendidly. With no mention of persecution or even any anger from the religious establishment, 3,000 people were added to the church. And these 3,000 continued to keep the traditions familiar to them. They maintained their dietary restrictions, kept the Sabbath, and participated in temple worship. Even Peter and John went to the temple at the hour of prayer (Acts 2:46-3:1; cf. Acts 21:20-21).
I was taught that the break between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant was instant; Jesus nailed the Law to the Cross, but the first disciples apparently didn’t get this memo, and why would they?
Not only had Jesus warned them not to break the commandments (Matthew 5:17-20), there was no reason for them to change up their diet, take a different day off, or change their worship routines. Since the church was most, if not all, Jewish—besides “visitors from Rome” or proselytes (Acts 2:10)—there wasn’t much call to change.
Acts 3-6
But as the church increased in number daily and performed very public miracles, people began to take notice. While they had the “goodwill of all the people,” the religious leaders were offended that Peter and John did not get their authority from them (Acts 2:47; Acts 4:7).
Peter and John were arrested and commanded not to preach anymore in Jesus’s name.
This wake-up call forced the disciples to take a stand: “Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19–20).
They knew that the wonderful act of love they were witnesses of was too good not to share. But now they saw that not everyone was ready to receive this gift.
We are often told to go wherever truth leads, to seek truth no matter what. But it is usually assumed by those in charge that they already have all truth, so any truth discovered by their students will lead the students back to them.
When this doesn't happen, the students, supposing their leaders to be honest, share with them the beauty of the truth they discovered.
Maybe it’s a new angle on an old message. Perhaps it’s a different interpretation. Or it could be an entirely new way of viewing Scripture.
But these changes, regardless of how minor, aren’t welcome.
One would think that the shock of having one’s ideas shot down would be enough to put a person over the edge, but eager truth-seekers are often too optimistic and perhaps a bit naive.
Like the disciples in Acts, they persist in sharing, confident that their leaders will come around to these obvious truths, and they don’t even expect it when it happens…
Acts 7-9
But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him, and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.
While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he died. And Saul approved of their killing him. Acts 7:57–8:1a
The church scattered.
But this persecution had an interesting effect. Instead of quieting the disciples, Peter and John’s words remained true, “We can’t stop talking about what we have seen.”
The truth revealed to them by the Spirit was a far greater reality than the persecution they received. This caused them to shout the good news everywhere they went.
And where did they go?
“All except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria…” (Acts 8:1).
Samaria: exactly where Jesus told them to go in Acts 1:8.
But it took the death of Stephen, extreme loss, to get them there.
And this starts the wheels turning. If Samaritans can receive the good news of Jesus, then how about a eunuch on his way back to Ethiopia? And if an Ethiopian eunuch, how about the very man who approved of Stephen’s death? And if he can be saved…
As 1 Timothy later says, “But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience as an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life…” (1 Timothy 1:16).
Paul is saying, “If I could follow Jesus after what I did, then God might just be able to save anybody!”
Which, of course, is really good news.
But once this church began to expand to open its doors to people outside of their tribe, there was no stopping it. This means, however, that the church had to make a decision: what do we do with our traditions that typically exclude the very people who are being transformed by the gospel?
Acts 10 -21
In Acts 10, we find Peter on a roof praying around midday. As he prayed, he had a vision of a sheet being let down from heaven with all kinds of unclean animals upon it. A voice came from heaven, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.”
The voice said, “What God has made clean, you must not call unclean.”
This happened three times, but then, as some men from Cornelius’s house approached, the sheet was suddenly taken up into heaven.
Peter wondered what it could mean, and the Spirit gave him the answer: he was to go to Cornelius’s house without hesitation because they had been sent by the Holy Spirit.
When Peter arrived in Caesarea the next day, he said, “You yourselves know that it is improper for a Jew to associate with or to visit an outsider…”
Notice the “us versus them” language in Peter’s disclaimer. To Peter, Cornelius and his household, much like the animals on the sheet let down from heaven, were outsiders; they were unclean.
While persecution led the church to take the gospel to the Gentiles, Peter would need an overwhelming act of love to convince him that the Gentiles could receive baptism and be included in the church.
Peter finishes his comment by saying, “…but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”
From here, Peter launched into a sermon about the life of Christ, his death, and resurrection. Before he could finish speaking, though, the Holy Spirit wanted to show Peter that the Gentiles were already included, so Cornelius’s household was baptized in the Spirit just as the 120 disciples were in Acts 2.
Before Peter could make a move, the Spirit was already at work.
After this chapter, the story begins to focus on Paul, who took the inclusive gospel of Jesus as far he could before the end of his life.
During the course of his mission work, one question came up again and again: what do we do with these outsiders?
In Acts 15, a council was called to address this question. Some were saying, "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). This sounds a lot like what Christians do with our sacraments today even though the Spirit showed that God could work faster than we can administer baptism in Acts 10.
After this meeting, one would think things would be settled in the church, but when Paul returned to Jerusalem in Acts 21, there’s one question on the elders’ minds (Peter isn’t mentioned).
Then they said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews, and they are all zealous for the law. They have been told about you that you teach all the Jews living among the gentiles to forsake Moses and that you tell them not to circumcise their children or observe the customs. What then is to be done? Acts 21:20–22
Despite what the church had learned in Acts 10 and Acts 15, people still had a hard time understanding what the Spirit was up to through Paul. Perhaps this is why John recorded the words of Jesus in John 3,
The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8
This kind of relapse is natural, of course, and it should encourage us that the perfect, unimpeachable, gold standard of Christian life that is The First Century Church had these problems. Perhaps the biblical standard or blueprint of the church is learning, confusion, relapse, and relearning!
But this brings us to the end of this section. Let’s focus in on Peter and Paul.
Peter and Paul: Pictures of the Two-Halves of Life
Peter
The first half of life is spent building our sense of identity, importance, and security… But inevitably you discover, often through failure or a significant loss, that your conscious self is not all of you, but only the acceptable you… (From the quote in the introduction)
The church under Peter’s leadership in Acts really shows us what the first-half of life looks like and perhaps a taste of the beginnings of the second-half of life.
The church stays within its natural geographical boundaries of Jerusalem and Judea, only traveling into Samaria following a significant loss: the death of Stephen and the persecution of the church by Saul, who ironically helps lead the church into the second-half of life within the narrative of Acts.
It was in the presence of Peter, in fact, that those who undermined the authority of the apostles or who blasphemed God were put to death by an angel of the Lord (Acts 5:1-11; Acts 12:20-23).
The first account, which concerns Ananias and Sapphire, is meant to remind us of Aaron’s two sons (Nadab and Abihu) who offered strange fire to God and died. Luke is very interested in painting the spread of the gospel as Isaiah’s New Exodus, and he takes every chance he can to sprinkle something in. This story doesn’t say who or what killed Ananias and Sapphira, just that they died.
The second story, which does specify that Herod was killed by an angel of the Lord, is meant to invoke the popular theme of the kingdom of God versus the empire of Rome. While the violence may be repulsive to us, Luke invokes the imagery of Isaiah 66:24 and perhaps God’s judgment of the gods of Egypt to condemn the entire empire to Gehenna. Through this story, Luke undermines the authority of the empire and gives glory to God.
Regardless, these two stories are both very “first-half of life” kinds of stories because they deal with the extremes of “us versus them” thinking. Despite appearing before several Roman officials, even Caesar himself, no story like this is attributed the apostle Paul.
Paul
In the second half of life, the ego still has a place, but now in the service of the True Self or soul, your inner and inherent identity. Your ego is the container that holds you all together, so now its strength is an advantage. Someone who can see their ego in this way is probably what we mean by a “grounded” person.
Once Paul begins to take center stage in Acts, the stories as well as his own account of these events in his epistles begin to include much more nuance. Paul, for example, disagrees with the letter sent out in Acts 15 by the time he authored 1 Corinthians.
He brings more and more women into the church and recognizes them as leaders. He lifts up slaves to the same place of honor as their masters. And he fully includes his Gentile brothers and sisters into the Christian community.
Paul’s teaching that “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love” upsets the norms and standards that he himself has staunchly defended (Galatians 5:6).
The line between clean and unclean became so blurry, in fact, that some thought that he had taken Greeks into the temple itself (Acts 21:28).
Paul transcends and includes “Saul” in the narrative. He discards the tribalism, but he kept the love for his country and his zeal. It’s when the narrator begins using “Paul” instead of “Saul” that Paul becomes the focus of Acts in chapter 13.
This transition also takes place in the only chapter in the entire New Testament where King Saul, Paul’s namesake, is mentioned (Acts 13:21-22). Paul brings King Saul up to show his audience the difference between who the people wanted and who God would select, much like how we may prefer the comfort of the first-half of life when we feel the birth pangs of transition.
What We Can Learn from Acts About the Two-Halves of Life
There are several lessons we can learn from all of this, and probably even more than my young mind can recognize.
Movement into the second-half of life takes extreme loss (persecution) or extreme love (the baptism of the Spirit).
We often relapse into old ways of thinking when we get comfortable or around certain crowds, and that’s okay (such as Peter in Galatians 2 or the some of the Jewish Christians in Acts 21).
God often uses the most unlikely people to help us move into the second-half of life, and we might even need a Barnabas to help us accept this unexpected wisdom (Acts 9:26-30).
We shouldn’t be surprised when the Spirit moves us to accept those who our first-half of life standards may consider outsiders (like with Peter in Acts 10). Sometimes, even before we think we are ready, God asks us to take the uncomfortable step of including those we normally wouldn't.
We shouldn’t be surprised when our first-half of life mentors and leaders view us as heretics, trouble makers, or change agents when we respond to God’s call to move into the second-half of life (like when Peter and John were arrested). Sometimes the pain of rejection will be far worse than whatever that significant loss might be, but this kind of rejection is often the very thing we need to be our authentic selves. Being released from their care as shepherds may be the permission we need to wander into the wilderness so that the Chief Shepherd can bring us to our true self upon his shoulders.
I hope this study has been as beneficial for you to read as it has been for me to write. If you have anything to add, subtract, or change, please let me know in the comments! Your like or <3 goes a long way in letting me know you’re getting something out of my posts! Thanks for your support! :)