Acts 10:34-48 | Confronting Your Blind SpotsVzorec

Jesus tells a parable in Luke about cloth and wineskins. “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better’” (Luke 5:36-39).

Does it leave you scratching your head? Here’s what he’s saying: God is doing something new in Jesus that’s incompatible with the old, but our tendency will be to say we like the old better.

Our tendency is to get fixed in our ways. Something works. Stick with it. We have a good experience. Don’t change anything that risks not having that experience again. We’re taught something. Force everything to be interpreted through that lens. We come to know a little bit, see some success with it, and stay in our lane.

You would think as human beings we would have a greater capacity to learn, which of course implies changing our way of thinking as we come to see things we’ve previously been blind to. Whether due to pride, obstinance, fear, or laziness, it’s often not the case. New things, new ideas, and the fear of dealing with what we don’t know leads us to put blinders on. We might think we’re objective, but often, we are not.

Take the scientific community. It’s supposed to see the data and draw results based on it. Often, they do not. They dismiss anomalous data or data that does not fit within acceptable theories and scientific laws. When new things don’t fit old models, they’re often dismissed. Or take the way someone might interpret the Bible. How often do we squeeze a Bible passage to fit within our church background or tradition? Or maybe a person. How does our perception of them (or people we think are like them) shape the way we interpret their actions and intent? Scientific laws, theological systems, and past experience prove to be helpful guides. But what happens when our reliance on them keeps us from seeing something new?

Sometimes what we think God should be doing over what God is actually doing can become so iron-clad, that we miss what God is doing because it does not conform to what we believe. It can even lead us to reject God. This is what the Jews had done with Jesus, and what the disciples were struggling with as God poured his Spirit on these Gentiles.

It’s ironic here that Peter is now in the same place that the Sanhedrin and Jewish synagogues were in. Will he be obstinate or obedient to God’s new thing? All of us have blind spots. Peter confronted his. It allowed him to see what God was doing rather than dismissing the data (or distorting it to his preconceived pattern). Will you?