We are speaking plainly-

In Jerusalem Peter went to church and he came out against the gentile believers. You asked how going to church is a trap and I am answering you plainly.

Let’s try it this way-

My wife and I along with my two little daughters moved into an old farm house out in the country. After a while it became just outside of town. Then shortly it became part of a giant housing addition. So we moved. But when we first got there it was country like me. The first cold night I looked out the back window and there on the porch was a poor black shivering cat. So I went out to it but it ran. After repeating these steps a couple of times I got the bright idea to set some warm milk out. Kitty Boston, (for that is what my girls called her) came to the milk. Then when I came out she stayed and I petted her and she purred and we became fast friends. That next summer I noticed that when I went across the barn lot to get my lawnmower that people driving by in their cars would slow down pointing and staring at me. I thought this funny so after a while I asked my wife what was going on and she said that Kitty Boston was following me with her tail sticking straight up and that it sure was a funny sight.

Weeks later my wife and I were cleaning out the garage and heard a faint quack quack out in the side yard. Believe it or not it was a little stray baby duck, (mother and siblings were nowhere to be found). I told my wife to leave it but she got a box and bought duck feed and place the little bird in the garage. I tried to explain to her that the duck would probably not eat or drink as it only had eyes for its mother. And the poor thing did finally expire.

Still later Kitty Boston brought one of her children to visit me. Now this domesticated animal had never been around humans and really it acted like it had a dual personality. It wanted to be with me and Kitty Boston but I could only pick up the kitten in great peril to myself.

Let me share one other story and then I will finish-

Had a conversation with a fine Christian elderly lady last weekend and I asked her why she had been such a devout Pentecostal for these last ten years. She answered that having come from a badly broken home that while she was a young person the only stability in her life was the youth group at a particular Pentecostal church and that after a failed marriage of twenty-five years she was drawn to her childhood stability.

And the moral of these true to life little stories is that there is such of a thing as “imprinting”. I am sure that the same thing happened to Peter and all the apostles including Paul. That the religious institution of their childhood imprinted itself on them and it claimed ownership. It is no different today as human nature does not change so easily.