In his book, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, sociologist of religion Peter L. Berger describes how we humans create worlds of meaning to combat the anxiety that accompanies the fear that life is absurd. These created worlds have our human fingerprints on them. Our worlds are as impermanent as we are. The human response is self-deceit, which Berger calls “false faith.” We cast a “sacred canopy” over our worlds and, “Ta dah!” we assert they are God’s creations— not ours. And, since they are God’s, they are permanent. Who are we to think we can change them?
In Peter’s world a separation existed between the clean and the unclean, between the acceptable and the unacceptable. Then one night in a dream, a voice speaks eternal truth: In God’s wonderful world all is “clean.”
God removes the sacred canopy of Peter’s belief system, and Peter sees life differently. Now his life has new meaning and purpose. His mission will take him precisely where he had assumed he should not go—to the unclean whom he’d believed would make him unclean too.
Peter shares the gospel with them, and something happens that turns his world upside down—again. Before Peter has finished his sermon and given the altar call, “the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.”
“The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded.” They believed in a divinely ordained order: 1) be circumcised; 2) believe Jesus is the Christ; 3) be baptized; 4) then receive the Holy Spirit. This Holy Spirit has a mind of its own. The Spirit blows where and how it will and creates a new world with a new law and order.