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Bridge Building in the 21st Century
By Jay Haug
Special to Virtueonline www.virtueonline.org
April 7, 2013
Acts 17:16-34
In Athens
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?" Others remarked, "He seems to be advocating foreign gods." They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean." 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
22 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. 23 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.
24 "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 human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.'[a] As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'[b]
29 "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone-an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead."
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, "We want to hear you again on this subject." 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
Lord Jesus, You are great bridge-builder, having crossed the greatest distance in the universe, that between heaven and earth, for our sake. May we cross the street and the distance between us and the hearts and minds of others to win them to You. All for your glory. Amen.
Last week, we spoke about the two essential qualities to building an effective Biblical worldview, one that communicates the gospel powerfully with people living today.
First, we must possess a passion for the word of God undergirded by the unshakeable belief that God has spoken and that He desires to speak to this generation. There is simply nothing more life-transforming than hearing from God and implementing what he has said.
Secondly, we must be imbued with a commitment to listen and understand the culture to which we are sent, so that we can build bridges of relationship over which the gospel travels. How then do we accomplish this second goal? How do we, in our complex and frenetic 21st century world make inroads for the gospel along new frontiers. To gain an understanding of the task before us, we could look at no better a place than the Apostle Paul's visit to Athens in Acts 17.
For in this passage we will discover some amazing parallels to our own day and discover that the world we face today is not so unique as we might think. If you remember, Paul's initial strategy was to base his gospel mission in the Jewish synagogue. Just as Jesus mission before him was to "go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," Paul's was, as Romans tells us, "to the Jew first and also to the Greek or Gentile." But two things happened.
First, Paul was roundly persecuted and thrown out of Jewish synagogues wherever he went. Secondly, he found himself in the midst of a pagan culture that had no knowledge of the Bible and would never respond to a "thus saith the Lord message," simply because they were Biblically ignorant.
So Paul had to adopt a new strategy, one that would reach secular, relativistic and yes even post-modern people ignorant of the Scriptures. We have lived in that world for quite some time now. And it is heartening to see the new ways Christians are inventing to reach people.
Just last Sunday, I spoke with a man whose new ministry is to place chaplains where young people work, because nearly half of the young people of high school age are dropping out and going to work and that is where you will meet them, not in a church youth group. Today, we see churches meeting in halls, rec rooms and even bars. We see meetings in non-religious settings where questions are welcomed. Why? To paraphrase Willie Sutton, that is where the people are.
In fact, I believe we are entering a new apostolic age, where the collapse of some church structure is already leading to new missions and new mission fields. Just as the Temple in Jerusalem being destroyed helped lead to the gentile mission, so the collapse of the mainline churches is leading to the seed being scattered. Painful as it is, this appears to be God's plan to get us out of our comfort zone and into His kingdom zone. Paul adapted his strategy to reach the Gentile world. So must we to reach the new pagans of our day. Paul changed his emphasis from a church based (synagogue) ministry to a marketplace ministry. That ministry began here in Athens in the place of speech-making where the city leaders had traditionally met. So just as his audience changed, so did his strategy. It would no longer work to assume his audience knew or understood the Scriptures, much less accepted their authority.
In fact, if you noticed, this audience was so confused, they think Jesus and Anastasis, which means "resurrection" are actually two gods Paul is proclaiming. Like ancient Athens, we too are living in a largely Biblically ignorant world. What are some of the parallels? Here are three. 1. Much like our day, the world Paul faced was a world brimming with intellectual, social and cultural cross-currents. Athens had a bit of everything.
As I Howard Marshall says, "there was in Athens a blend of superstitious idolatry and enlightened philosophy." In other words, Athens possessed everything from middle-brow Oprah emo-ism, to Richard Dawkins' intellectualism to Scientology's mystery cult. It was a marketplace of ideas rooted in the secular city, a hodge podge with no particular guiding principles other than the "Golden mean" which meant "don't go overboard on anything."
Today's average seeker says he or she is spiritual, not religious and yet their spirituality is often long on self-seeking and short on revelation, long on subjectivism and short on discipleship, long on license and short on liberty. In other words, we have seen this before. It is the default human condition.
2. People in Athens believed that they were seeking God and that each person's search was unique and to be respected. In fact, one commentator remarks that there were so many statues and idols in Athens, that while walking around, you were more likely to run into a god than a man. The ancient world was comfortable with many gods and many paths.Rome was willing to tolerate Christ as one among many. It was Jesus exclusive demand for worship that threatened the divine Emperor. Moreover, the gods of the Greek pantheon were just as flawed as humans. They were weak, impulsive, fallen and suffered consequences, just like we humans. They simply played them out on a larger stage. In our own relativistic age, we are like the Greek gods of old, trying to figure it out as we go along without any one Being to whom we owe ultimate allegiance.
People today say they are spiritual but not religious, yet we have forgotten the central Christian view that God is searching for man not man for God. The real issue is not "the integrity of our search." It is rather the truth of God's search for us. In fact in a couple of places the Scriptures tell us that no one is really searching at all. "There is no one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, " Romans 3:10-12a Paul has to turn the tables to tell them that even if they search for God, it is God who is the great actor in the universe. It is God who speaks. It is God who reveals His Son and it is God who calls man to follow him and who sets the day of judgment. God is the seeker and it is we who are found. Do you remember after Adam and Eve had fallen in the garden, it was God who cried out to Adam, "Where are you?' Francis Thompson's poem, The Hound of Heaven, demonstrates this truth.
I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated
Adown titanic glooms of chasmed fears
From those strong feet that followed, followed after
But with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat, and a Voice beat,
More instant than the feet:
All things betray thee who betrayest me God is the pursuer. We are the pursued.
3. Thirdly, Athens like America, was in the minds of many fading as a dominating power in the world. The glories of classical Greece had faded by the time Paul stepped onto the Areopagus. Its best years were behind it. Like America, many believed and feared that the "golden mean" had given way to an incoherent cacophony of movements and ideas, similar to the post-modern mire many young people are stuck in today. Modernism rejected traditional belief. Post-modernism rejects the very categories of thought that made western civilization great and plunges its devotees into irrational or emotionally driven lives devoid of eternal meaning. Post-modernists have painted themselves into an irrational corner where politicians and cultural icons can easily manipulate them.
Those who heard Paul in the marketplace referred to his teaching as "babbling," calling him an intellectual "scrap-picker." But it was they who lived in darkness and incoherence. Today "organized religion" has never been more despised the apparent search for meaning and purpose never greater. But how do we find that purpose and meaning when we have closed off the very possibility of finding it? I came from New England, a place that in general has done just that, rejecting its heritage of religious freedom for the hot meal of secular humanism. How do a people find their way back?
As Abraham Lincoln said at another point in crisis...."The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." Having been largely persecuted and rejected by his people, Paul had to think afresh. How did Paul change his mission? Three things.
1. He took the time to understand the minds and hearts of his hearers We too must understand the competing worldviews of our day. What did Paul do? First, he surveyed the surroundings. He took in the atmosphere. We are told in verse 16 that he was "greatly distressed" at the idolatry he saw. But then he took the time to engage in conversation. (verse 17) Then they asked him about his faith. (verse 19) Then he gave a speech. Notice the progression. This may have taken place over a period of days or weeks but he took the time to absorb his surroundings, to understand the people. Then he picked up on the religious desires of his hearers and complimented them on their religious expression. Paul means this not as a criticism but an opening. He says in verse 22, "People of Athens. I see that in every way you are very religious." When he found an inscription on one statue "to an unknown God," he had his bridge. Their one place of humility and uncertainty would be the opening Paul needed to build his bridge.
We must win the right to be heard. The most famous teacher at my alma mater was a man who taught by asking questions and listening to the answers. The college now has reunions and conventions in his name where hundreds of former students return. Though he has been dead since 1974, his legacy grows by the year. Why? because he took the time to understand, to ask, and to listen. And the students loved him.
Last week, I mentioned that we can be confident that every person we have ever known has been searching for God, even if they do not know it. But a further truth lies behind it, the wound, the broken dream, the fear that is the opening for the gospel. You see if someone believes God has an answer, a way forward, a way to heal that thing in their life that is holding them back, they will begin to come into the light, they will be open to trusting Christ. In proclaiming the "Unknown God," Paul was both affirming their religiosity and showing them that they too had made room for a god they did not know...the real and only God.
Secondly, he studied their poets and philosophers and quotes them. (verse 28.) You know when I was 16 a man came to my school in new Hampshire, took out a record player, played three pop songs, talked about them and shared the gospel. The man was in his forties, but he took the time to listen to the song lyrics that teenagers were listening to. It was powerful and life-changing. If we are going to reach our generation, we must get into the very heartbeat of what drives them.
Most of the intellectuals in Paul's audience were Epicureans or Stoics. Epicurians like many today were materialist in outlook. For them the gods either did not exist or were so far removed from the world as to be irrelevant. They thought it unnecessary to seek after God and possessed no fear of his judgment. Their quest, like today was for "the good life" in a spiritual sense and inner peace. Sound familiar? On the other hand, the Stoic philosophy of God was pantheistic...God is in everything and everyone. They believed in reason, self-sufficiency and duty.
Today's artists would have been Epicurean; it's business-people stoics. But what Paul does is praise the philosophers while at the same time showing that their philosophy did not go far enough. Here is what we must do. We must demonstrate that the philosophies, song lyrics and popular movements of our day are giving us opportunities to build these bridges of meaning, bridges over which the gospel can travel. They reveal conditions of the heart that only Jesus can fully address.
Having identified with his hearers, Paul then begins to undermine their position. He begins to redefine both the question and the answer. You see the unknown God is not the object but the subject. He is the giver, the lover, the seeker. It is not we who find Him, but he who reveals Himself to us. CS. Lewis said in relation to God we are all feminine. He is the pursuer and we are the pursued. Paul outlines it this way. 24 "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 human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.'[b] As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'[c]
You see once we have built the trust and understood and identified with the world of our hearers, we can begin to set things straight.
3. So thirdly, Paul corrects their thinking and calls them to a change of heart and mind
29 "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone-an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead."
This is where every human being must come, no matter whether they have heard Paul in Athens or read the Bible and been convicted, or heard the gospel presented in the 21stcentury. The destination is the same. The techniques we use in the secular city lead to the same destination, just by a different path. We just have to know how to journey with someone along the path. The early church father Tertullian, asked the pointed question, "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem or the Academy with the temple?
Our answer is: plenty. Both are his tools to bring his daughters and sons home, if we know how to use them. Notice that Paul does not simply tell them about God's plan for the world. He calls them to repentance and tells them that final judgment is coming. Now telling people about judgment is both the most difficult and the most necessary thing to do today. The reality is that everyone is being judged all the time.
No amount of self-esteem education can change this. My 88 year old mother is fond of saying "We are ALL being tested." These are life's pop quizzes and they occur at regular intervals. I bet you have had some already this week. To the person who thinks that judgment is an outdated and unacceptable idea, I ask this.
So one day we will die and are we now expected to believe the final exam will be much easier than the pop quiz? Not a chance. You see the whole world is crying out for justice and the world makes no sense without it. We have the privilege of showing how a just and loving God is going to conduct that judgment, and that His mercy is overflowing to those who, like me, fall short.
The response from the Athenians is procrastination. "We will hear you again." Years ago when I was in England, I used to attend the lunch-hour services at St. Helen's Bishopsgate, just a stone's throw from Lloyd's of London. In those days, St. Helen's, under the teaching ministry of Dick Lucas, had one of the best Bible teaching ministries around and the attendance at the lunch hour services was about 85% male.
I took a friend, a wealthy stock-broker who worked for Kidder Peabody in London. About 30 years old, he had a beautiful wife and two beyond cute daughters. The night before, he confessed to me, "Jay, I know I am going to have an affair. I just don't know when." I felt a cold chill and a helpless feeling. After the service, he said, perhaps knowing the future that awaited him, Jay, "I sense you are trying to close the deal here." I called him by name and said, "You bet." But he did not take the step of faith that day. And we never saw one another again. He is approaching 70 now and I wonder what happened to him.
I don't know if he ever got the chance to hear the gospel again. Nor do I know what tests life handed him or how he handled them. You see we are all under judgment. And if God is springing pop quizzes on us all the time, can you imagine what the final exam will be like? Now not everyone was converted that day in Athens but Paul demonstrated a great and enduring strategy, that we can build bridges and we can win souls who do not know the Bible, souls who will eventually love the Bible because they love Jesus and his followers. Those same bridges are open to us if we will but take the time to build and cross them for the sake of His kingdom.
An effective biblical worldview working through individuals and ministries will always do the following: We will be present with those who are seeking over a sustained period. We will earn the right to be heard by listening and understanding. We will build bridges of relationship and truth over which Jesus presence and power can travel, often in both directions. What a privilege it is to partner with Him in this ministry.
Jay Haug is a member of Anglican Church of the Redeemer in Jacksonville, Florida and author of Beyond the Flaming Sword, available from Amazon.com. You may contact him at cjcwguy@gmail.com
Bridge Building in the 21st Century
By Jay Haug
Special to Virtueonline www.virtueonline.org
April 7, 2013
Acts 17:16-34
In Athens
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?" Others remarked, "He seems to be advocating foreign gods." They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean." 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)22 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. 23 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.
24 "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 human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.'[a] As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'[b]
29 "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone-an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead."
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, "We want to hear you again on this subject." 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
Lord Jesus, You are great bridge-builder, having crossed the greatest distance in the universe, that between heaven and earth, for our sake. May we cross the street and the distance between us and the hearts and minds of others to win them to You. All for your glory. Amen.
Last week, we spoke about the two essential qualities to building an effective Biblical worldview, one that communicates the gospel powerfully with people living today.
First, we must possess a passion for the word of God undergirded by the unshakeable belief that God has spoken and that He desires to speak to this generation. There is simply nothing more life-transforming than hearing from God and implementing what he has said.
Secondly, we must be imbued with a commitment to listen and understand the culture to which we are sent, so that we can build bridges of relationship over which the gospel travels. How then do we accomplish this second goal? How do we, in our complex and frenetic 21st century world make inroads for the gospel along new frontiers. To gain an understanding of the task before us, we could look at no better a place than the Apostle Paul's visit to Athens in Acts 17.
For in this passage we will discover some amazing parallels to our own day and discover that the world we face today is not so unique as we might think. If you remember, Paul's initial strategy was to base his gospel mission in the Jewish synagogue. Just as Jesus mission before him was to "go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," Paul's was, as Romans tells us, "to the Jew first and also to the Greek or Gentile." But two things happened.
First, Paul was roundly persecuted and thrown out of Jewish synagogues wherever he went. Secondly, he found himself in the midst of a pagan culture that had no knowledge of the Bible and would never respond to a "thus saith the Lord message," simply because they were Biblically ignorant.
So Paul had to adopt a new strategy, one that would reach secular, relativistic and yes even post-modern people ignorant of the Scriptures. We have lived in that world for quite some time now. And it is heartening to see the new ways Christians are inventing to reach people.
Just last Sunday, I spoke with a man whose new ministry is to place chaplains where young people work, because nearly half of the young people of high school age are dropping out and going to work and that is where you will meet them, not in a church youth group. Today, we see churches meeting in halls, rec rooms and even bars. We see meetings in non-religious settings where questions are welcomed. Why? To paraphrase Willie Sutton, that is where the people are.
In fact, I believe we are entering a new apostolic age, where the collapse of some church structure is already leading to new missions and new mission fields. Just as the Temple in Jerusalem being destroyed helped lead to the gentile mission, so the collapse of the mainline churches is leading to the seed being scattered. Painful as it is, this appears to be God's plan to get us out of our comfort zone and into His kingdom zone. Paul adapted his strategy to reach the Gentile world. So must we to reach the new pagans of our day. Paul changed his emphasis from a church based (synagogue) ministry to a marketplace ministry. That ministry began here in Athens in the place of speech-making where the city leaders had traditionally met. So just as his audience changed, so did his strategy. It would no longer work to assume his audience knew or understood the Scriptures, much less accepted their authority.
In fact, if you noticed, this audience was so confused, they think Jesus and Anastasis, which means "resurrection" are actually two gods Paul is proclaiming. Like ancient Athens, we too are living in a largely Biblically ignorant world. What are some of the parallels? Here are three. 1. Much like our day, the world Paul faced was a world brimming with intellectual, social and cultural cross-currents. Athens had a bit of everything.
As I Howard Marshall says, "there was in Athens a blend of superstitious idolatry and enlightened philosophy." In other words, Athens possessed everything from middle-brow Oprah emo-ism, to Richard Dawkins' intellectualism to Scientology's mystery cult. It was a marketplace of ideas rooted in the secular city, a hodge podge with no particular guiding principles other than the "Golden mean" which meant "don't go overboard on anything."
Today's average seeker says he or she is spiritual, not religious and yet their spirituality is often long on self-seeking and short on revelation, long on subjectivism and short on discipleship, long on license and short on liberty. In other words, we have seen this before. It is the default human condition.
2. People in Athens believed that they were seeking God and that each person's search was unique and to be respected. In fact, one commentator remarks that there were so many statues and idols in Athens, that while walking around, you were more likely to run into a god than a man. The ancient world was comfortable with many gods and many paths.Rome was willing to tolerate Christ as one among many. It was Jesus exclusive demand for worship that threatened the divine Emperor. Moreover, the gods of the Greek pantheon were just as flawed as humans. They were weak, impulsive, fallen and suffered consequences, just like we humans. They simply played them out on a larger stage. In our own relativistic age, we are like the Greek gods of old, trying to figure it out as we go along without any one Being to whom we owe ultimate allegiance.
People today say they are spiritual but not religious, yet we have forgotten the central Christian view that God is searching for man not man for God. The real issue is not "the integrity of our search." It is rather the truth of God's search for us. In fact in a couple of places the Scriptures tell us that no one is really searching at all. "There is no one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, " Romans 3:10-12a Paul has to turn the tables to tell them that even if they search for God, it is God who is the great actor in the universe. It is God who speaks. It is God who reveals His Son and it is God who calls man to follow him and who sets the day of judgment. God is the seeker and it is we who are found. Do you remember after Adam and Eve had fallen in the garden, it was God who cried out to Adam, "Where are you?' Francis Thompson's poem, The Hound of Heaven, demonstrates this truth.
I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated
Adown titanic glooms of chasmed fears
From those strong feet that followed, followed after
But with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat, and a Voice beat,
More instant than the feet:
All things betray thee who betrayest me God is the pursuer. We are the pursued.
3. Thirdly, Athens like America, was in the minds of many fading as a dominating power in the world. The glories of classical Greece had faded by the time Paul stepped onto the Areopagus. Its best years were behind it. Like America, many believed and feared that the "golden mean" had given way to an incoherent cacophony of movements and ideas, similar to the post-modern mire many young people are stuck in today. Modernism rejected traditional belief. Post-modernism rejects the very categories of thought that made western civilization great and plunges its devotees into irrational or emotionally driven lives devoid of eternal meaning. Post-modernists have painted themselves into an irrational corner where politicians and cultural icons can easily manipulate them.
Those who heard Paul in the marketplace referred to his teaching as "babbling," calling him an intellectual "scrap-picker." But it was they who lived in darkness and incoherence. Today "organized religion" has never been more despised the apparent search for meaning and purpose never greater. But how do we find that purpose and meaning when we have closed off the very possibility of finding it? I came from New England, a place that in general has done just that, rejecting its heritage of religious freedom for the hot meal of secular humanism. How do a people find their way back?
As Abraham Lincoln said at another point in crisis...."The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." Having been largely persecuted and rejected by his people, Paul had to think afresh. How did Paul change his mission? Three things.
1. He took the time to understand the minds and hearts of his hearers We too must understand the competing worldviews of our day. What did Paul do? First, he surveyed the surroundings. He took in the atmosphere. We are told in verse 16 that he was "greatly distressed" at the idolatry he saw. But then he took the time to engage in conversation. (verse 17) Then they asked him about his faith. (verse 19) Then he gave a speech. Notice the progression. This may have taken place over a period of days or weeks but he took the time to absorb his surroundings, to understand the people. Then he picked up on the religious desires of his hearers and complimented them on their religious expression. Paul means this not as a criticism but an opening. He says in verse 22, "People of Athens. I see that in every way you are very religious." When he found an inscription on one statue "to an unknown God," he had his bridge. Their one place of humility and uncertainty would be the opening Paul needed to build his bridge.
We must win the right to be heard. The most famous teacher at my alma mater was a man who taught by asking questions and listening to the answers. The college now has reunions and conventions in his name where hundreds of former students return. Though he has been dead since 1974, his legacy grows by the year. Why? because he took the time to understand, to ask, and to listen. And the students loved him.
Last week, I mentioned that we can be confident that every person we have ever known has been searching for God, even if they do not know it. But a further truth lies behind it, the wound, the broken dream, the fear that is the opening for the gospel. You see if someone believes God has an answer, a way forward, a way to heal that thing in their life that is holding them back, they will begin to come into the light, they will be open to trusting Christ. In proclaiming the "Unknown God," Paul was both affirming their religiosity and showing them that they too had made room for a god they did not know...the real and only God.
Secondly, he studied their poets and philosophers and quotes them. (verse 28.) You know when I was 16 a man came to my school in new Hampshire, took out a record player, played three pop songs, talked about them and shared the gospel. The man was in his forties, but he took the time to listen to the song lyrics that teenagers were listening to. It was powerful and life-changing. If we are going to reach our generation, we must get into the very heartbeat of what drives them.
Most of the intellectuals in Paul's audience were Epicureans or Stoics. Epicurians like many today were materialist in outlook. For them the gods either did not exist or were so far removed from the world as to be irrelevant. They thought it unnecessary to seek after God and possessed no fear of his judgment. Their quest, like today was for "the good life" in a spiritual sense and inner peace. Sound familiar? On the other hand, the Stoic philosophy of God was pantheistic...God is in everything and everyone. They believed in reason, self-sufficiency and duty.
Today's artists would have been Epicurean; it's business-people stoics. But what Paul does is praise the philosophers while at the same time showing that their philosophy did not go far enough. Here is what we must do. We must demonstrate that the philosophies, song lyrics and popular movements of our day are giving us opportunities to build these bridges of meaning, bridges over which the gospel can travel. They reveal conditions of the heart that only Jesus can fully address.
Having identified with his hearers, Paul then begins to undermine their position. He begins to redefine both the question and the answer. You see the unknown God is not the object but the subject. He is the giver, the lover, the seeker. It is not we who find Him, but he who reveals Himself to us. CS. Lewis said in relation to God we are all feminine. He is the pursuer and we are the pursued. Paul outlines it this way. 24 "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 human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.'[b] As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'[c]
You see once we have built the trust and understood and identified with the world of our hearers, we can begin to set things straight.
3. So thirdly, Paul corrects their thinking and calls them to a change of heart and mind
29 "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone-an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead."
This is where every human being must come, no matter whether they have heard Paul in Athens or read the Bible and been convicted, or heard the gospel presented in the 21stcentury. The destination is the same. The techniques we use in the secular city lead to the same destination, just by a different path. We just have to know how to journey with someone along the path. The early church father Tertullian, asked the pointed question, "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem or the Academy with the temple?
Our answer is: plenty. Both are his tools to bring his daughters and sons home, if we know how to use them. Notice that Paul does not simply tell them about God's plan for the world. He calls them to repentance and tells them that final judgment is coming. Now telling people about judgment is both the most difficult and the most necessary thing to do today. The reality is that everyone is being judged all the time.
No amount of self-esteem education can change this. My 88 year old mother is fond of saying "We are ALL being tested." These are life's pop quizzes and they occur at regular intervals. I bet you have had some already this week. To the person who thinks that judgment is an outdated and unacceptable idea, I ask this.
So one day we will die and are we now expected to believe the final exam will be much easier than the pop quiz? Not a chance. You see the whole world is crying out for justice and the world makes no sense without it. We have the privilege of showing how a just and loving God is going to conduct that judgment, and that His mercy is overflowing to those who, like me, fall short.
The response from the Athenians is procrastination. "We will hear you again." Years ago when I was in England, I used to attend the lunch-hour services at St. Helen's Bishopsgate, just a stone's throw from Lloyd's of London. In those days, St. Helen's, under the teaching ministry of Dick Lucas, had one of the best Bible teaching ministries around and the attendance at the lunch hour services was about 85% male.
I took a friend, a wealthy stock-broker who worked for Kidder Peabody in London. About 30 years old, he had a beautiful wife and two beyond cute daughters. The night before, he confessed to me, "Jay, I know I am going to have an affair. I just don't know when." I felt a cold chill and a helpless feeling. After the service, he said, perhaps knowing the future that awaited him, Jay, "I sense you are trying to close the deal here." I called him by name and said, "You bet." But he did not take the step of faith that day. And we never saw one another again. He is approaching 70 now and I wonder what happened to him.
I don't know if he ever got the chance to hear the gospel again. Nor do I know what tests life handed him or how he handled them. You see we are all under judgment. And if God is springing pop quizzes on us all the time, can you imagine what the final exam will be like? Now not everyone was converted that day in Athens but Paul demonstrated a great and enduring strategy, that we can build bridges and we can win souls who do not know the Bible, souls who will eventually love the Bible because they love Jesus and his followers. Those same bridges are open to us if we will but take the time to build and cross them for the sake of His kingdom.
An effective biblical worldview working through individuals and ministries will always do the following: We will be present with those who are seeking over a sustained period. We will earn the right to be heard by listening and understanding. We will build bridges of relationship and truth over which Jesus presence and power can travel, often in both directions. What a privilege it is to partner with Him in this ministry.
Jay Haug is a member of Anglican Church of the Redeemer in Jacksonville, Florida and author of Beyond the Flaming Sword, available from Amazon.com. You may contact him at cjcwguy@gmail.com
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