This is an astonishing point of view, especially when one considers that Paul’s lists ranked miracle-working and healing alongside prophecy as among the “best gifts”. Ordinary people living according to Christ’s commandments, walking in Christ’s footsteps, taking up his Cross, and thereby receiving the power to work miracles, heal the sick and prophesy! Wow.

This whole idea of kharismata drives home the fact that, for Peter and Paul, Christianity was not just about “accepting Christ as your personal savior”. Far less was it only about the liberal social gospel of political and economic justice for the poor, or the Christian Right’s agenda of stopping abortion, homosexuals and socialists, or the Quaker worshiper’s hope of having a nice deep meeting for worship.

Christianity was also, and above all that, about walking the path, and thereby opening a door through which Christ himself could re-manifest in the world.

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Most Christians — including most Christian Quakers — are, I think, more inclined to approach the Bible as insiders, which is to say, as people whose lives are embedded within the selfsame story that the Bible tells the early chapters of. So for them, the Bible is not an objective textbook that one examines with detachment, like a school board considering a new civics text.

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