March 17, 2014
Using the Culture
I came away from a recent missionary conference
with some thought provoking ideas. One missionary referenced Paul’s
evangelistic tactics during a meeting of the Areopagus in Athens. Paul was
distress by all the idols in Athens, but among the altars to various gods was
an altar with the inscription, “TO AN UNKNOWN GOD”. Many of us in that
situation might focus on all the false gods and how we could eliminate them.
Paul, however, did not attempt to discredit the false gods, but rather showed
missionary wisdom by using the cultural idols of the day to point to God. Making
the unknown known, Paul said, “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. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything,
because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.” (Acts
17:24-25 NIV)
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2 comments:
Gail;
-----You don’t pick on the beliefs of the man whose ear you’re trying to win. But as God is real and false beliefs need exposed, He had servants for that as well. Once Constantine put an end to oppressing Christianity, the early church fathers’ tastes for truth came to the surface of their work. At their fingertips were a cadre of historical books worthy of making Darwin wet his britches while running for cover in the tall grass.
-----People are the same in every place and time. Most eat and drink merrily after a hard day’s work of doing what they at least somewhat despise. Their husbands and wives and children and brothers and sisters and friends and relatives and the games they play together pretty much frame the most of their interests beyond what they need to know for their boring jobs. Among them are the impetuous type whose business and ambition and sole purpose is to control the avenues of everyone else’s lives in such a manner that little rivulet’s of each household’s money and supplies divert into their own pockets. Between these two lives the penumbra who understand the means of rivulet diversion by tampering with and twisting up the cultural meanings and terminology and shared knowledge of the minions. It is their business to bask in the graces of the impetuous by supplying all the services of deceit their rule needs. So it is that horrendous stories are twisted up out of ordinary history to eventually hide the truth under the dense cover of many, many generations of briars and brambles and cheat-grass. The good folks around who just want to make merry after a hard day’s slightly unpleasant work don’t go searching and ferreting into every nook and cranny of remote information trying to sniff out tiny nuggets of basic truth. They’ll believe what the neighbors believe, if that’s what it takes to raise the good-fellow stick and get another beer. The penumbra is happy to be of service here, striping the sticks to lay before all the little sheep down at their favorite watering holes.
-----So it is that all the sheep become striped; all the penumbra stripe the good-fellow sticks; and all the impetuous live lives of luxurious, pompous, self-servitude on the little rivulets of each household’s hard earned supplies. What it has taken to misguide man into this culture of exploitation is the truth of man’s relationship to God being held twisted beyond recognition.
-----By Paul’s time, there indeed were also the small number of good folks who could not let go of truth’s enticement. But the flood of lore was of Apollo and Minerva and Zeus and Hercules and Bel and the whole assortment of culture shaping gods telling them to be content with their good-fellow sticks, for their service as minions of the impetuous was by fate’s allotment. The flood was enough to silence the truthful few until Christ broke a story too incredible to ignore and too public to bury. Paul was the wise one, just dragging this story on stage and presenting it. The church fathers who followed researched the writings of those faithful to the truth in their histories. They showed that Apollo and Minerva and Zeus and Hercules and the rest were just historical men with long lives and impressive deeds elevated to worship by their great grand kids. Not that they minded. Hercules traveled about the Indian ocean erecting temples to himself. Humble, indeed! Eventually enough truth penetrated this flood for many centuries unto the day of a new impetuousness served by a penumbra beholden to evolution and wealth and the promise of building for themselves a new tower of utopia. Once again, truth languishes in the silt of the flood, with only a few of us panning it out.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
PS
Poor Hercules. I errantly accused him. It was Jupiter who erected the temples to himself, his father, and his grandfather.
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