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Cornelius The Centurion (Acts 10)

Last Sunday I did something I don't normally do. I went to church. It was a small storefront evangelical church that opened up a few years back, and I had heard that one of my co-workers was going to be preaching there. It turned out he wasn't scheduled to preach that Sunday, but I stayed anyway.

They had been studying the Book of Acts in the New Testament and were now up to chapter 10. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Acts (or Acts of the Apostles) is an idealized history of the first years of the Christian religion, and chapter 10 is where a Roman centurion named Cornelius becomes a Christian. It's quite a story, involving visions and miracles, and as typical of conversions in the Book of Acts, happens on the spot after only a brief introduction to the Good News. Today's preachers can only shake their heads in envy.

Anyway, I am not going to relate the story as you can read it for yourself. What I want to talk about is what Paul Harvey used to call the rest of the story. The part that isn't in Acts. And for that I will have to use my imagination because we really don't know anything about this guy except that he was a Roman centurion. It's very possible that Luke (the supposed author of Acts) just made him up to prove a point. Because if he was real, Luke left out the most interesting part of the story.

You see, Cornelius, being a Roman centurion, was not just an outsider, he was part of an occupying army that had to put down insurrections. So he would have known all about crucifixions and uprisings and the Roman legal system. He may or may not have known about the specific trial and execution of Jesus of Nazareth at the hands of Pontius Pilate, but he would have been in an unique position to find out, and he would have had an insider's view of those events. Something the pastor didn't mention, by the way.

So this is where Acts leaves off. It has now been some time since Cornelius and his family have been baptised and they are now learning the ins and outs of their new faith. Keep in mind this was before any of the New Testament had been written, so we don't know exactly what they were learning about Jesus' life. We also don't know what Bible they were using. It would have been some version of what we call the Old Testament and the Jews the Tanakh, probably the Greek Septuagint version as that seems to be the one most in use in the early church. But it wouldn't have been bound up in one volume like we have. The different books that made up the Old Testament/Tanakh were all written on separate scrolls, which means they could have been arranged in almost any order. In fact, that is what happened. The Jews arrange the books of the Tanakh one way and the Christians arrange them a different way; so that even though you have the same books, you end up emphasizing something different in each. The Christian version is arranged to highlight the Messianic prophecies; the Jewish version is arranged to highlight the promise of the Holy Land. Compare the endings, you will see what I mean.

So Cornelius is studying one or another of these versions and he has some questions. Maybe some things don't make sense. Maybe some of these Messianic prophecies look like they might have been taken out of context. He's not Jewish although he has hung around the synagogue, so he doesn't really know these writings like they do. But one thing he does know is the Roman military and how they do things. He hears that Jesus hung on the cross for only a few hours before dying. Wait a minute, he says, I've had to order a few of these things myself, and usually it takes several days for the victim to die. And this breaking the legs business--I've never heard of it. Doesn't mean it didn't happen that way, I'm just saying we didn't do that in my regiment.

And that is where the fun begins. Because I think anyone who's been around a church and had questions like these knows what happens next. Cornelius is at first tolerated, then increasingly taken aside and told that he is creating a disruption. That he needs to have faith, he needs to stop thinking so much, he needs to just plain stop what he is doing. He's hogging the floor, hogging the attention.

Now, none of this is in Acts, it's purely my imagination. The questions I have Cornelius asking, aren't. They've been asked and are still being asked by skeptics, doubters and seekers. Acts doesn't say what happened to Cornelius and his family. I don't even think there are any legends about them. Of course, maybe they all settled down and lived happily ever after.

When the pastor told me he had an autistic son, I started thinking about all this. We on the spectrum, as we know all too well, are outsiders. And I think it is safe to say that the church isn't set up to handle our spiritual needs. One of the reasons I drifted over the years into an agnostic atheism is that I could not find the answers to my autism in the Bible no matter how hard I tried. I do believe that autism has a spiritual component to it that is not being addressed. This is a condition that affects our brains, our souls, our selves, dammit!! It is who we are. And I don't know about you, but I want to know WHY I am the way I am and why I have had to go through so much if there is a loving God who cares for me.

Instead, I found the answers in science. And I think that this pastor is going to find out on his journey with his son that most of the resources dealing with autism are written from a secular perspective. If there are any that are written from a Christian perspective (and I don't mean sappy inspirational stuff), I've yet to come across them. The big names in autism, like Dr. Temple Grandin, are for the most part nonbelievers. You don't think that doesn't have an influence?

I wish him well. I have let him know that I am there to answer questions about autism and what it means to have this condition. Maybe he and his son can get through this with their faith intact. But I warned him, he may end up being challenged by questions that strike at the heart of what he believes.

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Spinning Compass
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