‘Assimilation’ by Owen Lynch - 8 June 2025

When ideas and faith spread, how much of a culture clash do we expect, and how do we deal with it? Owen Lynch looks at how the early church came into conflict with cultures that required assimilation in a forceful way. Some Jews wanted to force Christians to obey all Jewish laws. At the same time, Judaism was under threat from the Roman Empire, who tolerated differences up to a point, but would cancel and destroy cultures which they thought to be a threat. How different was Jesus’ approach, and that of his Spirit-filled followers? Had Jesus given people another way to unite through self-sacrificial love?

Any fans of Star Trek in the room today? When I was a student in 1992, I was obsessed with Star Trek - The Next Generation featuring the incomparable Patrick Stewart playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard! The best moment in the seven seasons of “The Next Generation”, was the finale of season three and the season four opener where Jean-Luc is assimilated into the Borg!

If you’re not familiar with the Borg, they were the most powerful and relentless of all the extraterrestrial enemies faced by the Federation. Their goal was to assimilate as many different species into their collective with the goal of achieving perfection.

Unfortunately, the consequences of assimilation was the complete destruction of the culture and way of life of the conquered peoples. I still remember the emotion of seeing our hero captain assimilated, losing all of his distinctiveness, and becoming part of the monochromatic machine! It was a brilliant cliffhanger ending to season three and an awful long year to wait for season four to find out what happened!

Ever since then, I cannot hear the word “assimilation” and not think of Jean-Luc!

Today, we are in the penultimate episode of this boxset studying Acts and we will be skimming through chapters 24 to 26. But to recap there have been several assassination attempts on Paul’s life.

The Jewish leaders want to kill Paul because he represented an existential threat to the Jewish way of life, the holiness of the temple and the purity of their traditions and values.

See Paul passionately believed that Jesus was not just the Jewish Messiah, but the whole world’s Messiah. This was consistent with the thinking of all Jews. The difference is that Paul didn’t insist that the Gentiles should convert to Judaism. Paul’s contemporaries would have been happy for Gentiles to convert to Judaism and many of them did, but when they did - these converts had to live according to the Jewish law and traditions.

Paul insisted that that was not necessary. And this was the problem. The Jewish leaders wanted to kill Paul, because he was preaching that the Gentiles could enjoy the same identity as Jews without needing to embrace Jewish laws and customs.

To the other Jews this was heresy, because it threatened to destroy the identity of the Jews through assimilation with the Gentiles.

To understand this, we need to think about the relative size of the Jewish population. It is suggested that at this time, the Jewish population in the Roman Empire was around seven million, whereas the total population of the Roman Empire was around seventy million. Only one in ten were Jews.

For a minority people especially in the Roman empire, where indigenous cultures were assimilated and destroyed under the threat of systematic Roman imperial violence, this was a cause for huge concern.

The Jews were afraid that their national language, culture, religion, values and traditions - their way of life would be destroyed if Paul had his way.

They did not want the nation of Israel to be assimilated into the rest of the world, diluting their values and traditions. Perhaps they had seen other nations and cultures destroyed and didn’t want that to happen to them. Certainly, the Old Testament describes the incredible resilience of the nation of Israel during repeated invasions by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans.

It’s not surprising that they are determined to snuff out Paul’s attempts to assimilate Jews and Gentiles.

Here in Acts 24 through to 26, we can see Luke compare two attempts to assimilate Jew and Gentile. The Roman way and the Jesus way.

First the Roman way Acts 24:24-27

24 Several days later Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish. He sent for Paul and listened to him as he spoke about faith in Christ Jesus. 25 As Paul talked about righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid and said, “That’s enough for now! You may leave. When I find it convenient, I will send for you.” 26 At the same time he was hoping that Paul would offer him a bribe, so he sent for him frequently and talked with him.

27 When two years had passed, Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus, but because Felix wanted to grant a favour to the Jews, he left Paul in prison.

Felix is married to Drusilla. They are an interesting couple because Drusilla is a divorced Jewish woman and Felix is a former slave who made his way out of slavery and up the greasy political ladder.

Their class status was unstable, they would only hold on to their aristocratic, position in the Roman Empire, if they cancelled their past and behaved as Roman citizens should.

So Felix behaves like the assimilated Roman citizen he is - he waits for Paul to bribe him with money to restore his freedom. Perhaps, that is how Felix escaped the captivity of slavery and he treats Paul in the same way. But Paul resists the temptation to abandon his values and traditions that prevent him from offering a bribe to Felix.

Paul did not have to abandon his own traditions and values to be a fully assimilated Roman Jew!

Luke them introduces us to another example of Roman assimilation - this time a brother and sister - King Agrippa and Bernice. Acts 25:13-22

13 A few days later King Agrippa and Bernice arrived at Caesarea to pay their respects to Festus. 14 Since they were spending many days there, Festus discussed Paul’s case with the king. He said: “There is a man here whom Felix left as a prisoner. 15 When I went to Jerusalem, the chief priests and the elders of the Jews brought charges against him and asked that he be condemned.

16 “I told them that it is not the Roman custom to hand over anyone before they have faced their accusers and have had an opportunity to defend themselves against the charges. 17 When they came here with me, I did not delay the case, but convened the court the next day and ordered the man to be brought in. 18 When his accusers got up to speak, they did not charge him with any of the crimes I had expected. 19 Instead, they had some points of dispute with him about their own religion and about a dead man named Jesus who Paul claimed was alive. 20 I was at a loss how to investigate such matters; so I asked if he would be willing to go to Jerusalem and stand trial there on these charges. 21 But when Paul made his appeal to be held over for the Emperor’s decision, I ordered him held until I could send him to Caesar.”

22 Then Agrippa said to Festus, “I would like to hear this man myself.”

He replied, “Tomorrow you will hear him.”

This King Agrippa and Bernice were the children of Herod the Great whose bizarre death is described by Luke in Acts 12.

Like their father, Agrippa and Bernice are Jews who were part of a royal dynasty who were allowed to retain their nominal regal titles and roles, but only if they did the work of the Roman Empire. They were fully assimilated Jews in a Gentile empire. Not surprisingly, they were hated by the Jews because they were seen as puppets of Rome. They were tolerated by Rome, as long as they did Caesar’s work, and as such their wealth and position depended on their dedication to Rome.

By telling us about Felix and Drusilla, Agrippa and Bernice, Luke is showing us what the Roman way of assimilation of Jew and Gentile looks like.

Roman assimilation means the destruction or cancellation of identities, histories, cultures and languages. It is the survival of the fittest. It is conqueror and conquered. It is King and Vassal. In fairness the to Romans, it’s not just them - it is the way of all empires.

But Luke also wants to show us Paul’s alternative vision for the joining of Jew and Gentile and it is not the way of Empire.

Agrippa gives Paul the chance to speak for himself, so Paul tells his story of how his encounter with the resurrected Jesus, transformed him. Acts 26: 9-14

9 “I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 10 And that is just what I did in Jerusalem. On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the Lord’s people in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. 11 Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. I was so obsessed with persecuting them that I even hunted them down in foreign cities.

12 “On one of these journeys I was going to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. 13 About noon, King Agrippa, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions. 14 We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ 15 “Then I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’

“ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. 16 ‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me.

Paul was walking the road of violence and destruction, he was seduced by the power and threat of violence to force people to conform.

But Paul’s road led to Damascus and on the way, he encountered the resurrected Jesus.

Here’s what Luke and Paul are wanting us to know - every road that leads to violence must become a road to Damascus. The amazing thing about Paul is that his own life shows us two ways to unite humanity.

The empire approach is to unify humanity at the site of conquest, violence and death.

The alternative approach is to unify humanity at the site of the resurrected body of Christ Jesus.

The former means loss, but the latter means gain.

The former cancels identities, histories, cultures and languages, and replaces it with the single culture of the conquering people.

The latter invites people to share in each other’s ways of life and come to know and love each other through the Spirit.

The former is the road that leads to death.

The latter is the road that leads to life.

In the resurrection of Jesus, Paul saw that true power to unite humanity lies in sacrificial love. He wrote in his letter to the Galatians 3:28 that:

28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

As we now share in the ritual of the Lord’s supper, may our focus be on the resurrection of Christ Jesus who unites all people with the sacrificial love that he expressed on the cross. It was an encounter with the resurrected Christ, that compelled Paul to spend the rest of his life bringing together Jew and Gentile in the love of Christ. May we encounter Christ Jesus in this sacred moment.

May the resurrection of Jesus cause us to reflect on our own attitudes to people whose way of life is different from our own.

More in this series