Mon. Aug. 18th :: Acts 17 :: Athens and missional living

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "People
of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked
around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an
altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of
the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven
and earth and does not live in temples built by hands…

(Acts 17.22-24)

------------------------------------------------------------

Acts 17 is unique when compared to much of the Bible.

It’s unique because for the majority of the Bible God’s preachers or prophets are speaking to people with a common worldview. Moses, Isaiah, and even Jesus spoke almost exclusively to people who believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

But Acts 17 is different.

Here Paul explains the gospel to people who don’t know or believe the Bible. They are pagans. And since these folks have more in common with non-Christians of the 21st century, I find it interesting where Paul starts.

He starts by quoting a pagan poet, which means he must have read this pagan poet. (I find this interesting because there are some out there who seem to suggest that Christians should only read, listen-to, and study supposedly ‘christian’ media. Apparently Paul didn’t share that belief.)

But Paul doesn’t stop there. He starts with an allusion to something familiar (this unnamed pagan poet) and he goes on to show how a Christ-centered philosophy makes better sense of the world around us than does the dominant cultural thinking of the day. He isn’t necessarily rude. But he does push back against the assumptions of the pagan worldview.

I’m wondering what this means for us today.

Here’s a random list of possible takeaways:

1) As Christians, we should spend some time reading, conversing with, and generally becoming knowledgeable in the ‘scriptures’ of a pagan world. Paul did that. And we should too.

2) As Christians we must overcome our aversion to conversing with people outside our religious sub-culture. Paul did that too.

3) As Christians we should ask the probing questions that reveal why Jesus makes more sense of our world than the prevailing philosophies of our day. Paul did that.

4) And lastly, perhaps we should learn to count conversations over conversions. Athens didn’t yield the mass conversions that other cities did. Probably because some relationships and people require more than a single sermon or conversation before coming to faith. Some things take time. And in the end we’re responsible for planting seeds. God grows. And Paul seemed OK with that as well.


What do you think?