We live in a high-gloss, fix-the-outside, cover-up-the-spots world. We believe in making good first impressions, so we are very adept at cover-ups and shining up the outside. We have cover-ups in politics, in the world of high finance, in big business, and in education. Even if you buy peaches or strawberries from a road-side fruit stand you have to watch lest they have put the smaller, maybe rotten, fruit on the bottom, and then entice you to purchace them by covering it with the larger, more beautiful fruit on top.

So, it seems it had to happen sooner or later, the temptation to fix-up would arise in the new fledgling church that God was bringing into being. With the exception of the events at Lystra, and a few other setbacks, things have been going fairly well with Paul and Barnabas as t…