Focus: Our Athens-like World

Text: Act.17:23

"For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you."

Robert South said of Athens, "An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise." Paul arrived Athens during his Second Missionary Journey. He came at a time when Athens had lost so much of its glory, but the signs of its greatness could still be seen. Athens was known as the city of learning. Literature and art thrived here. It was a city reputable for Greek art, science and philosophy. It is said to be "the seat of the most important university city in the ancient world, even under Roman sway." It is also said that "although politically conquered, it conquered its conquerors with its learning and culture." Athens is the birthplace of democracy. By its name Athens is associated to its patron goddess, Athene, known as the goddess of wisdom, warfare, crafts, and the protector or patroness of the city. Percy Bysshe Shelley said, "Let there be light! Said Liberty, And like sunrise from the sea, Athens arose!" Indeed it is said of Athens, "Athens, a city that never sleeps." John Milton declared, "Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts and eloquence." And Barack Obama also lends his voice, "Many of our ideas of democracy, so much of our literature and philosophy and science can be traced back to roots right here in Athens."

When Paul entered this citadel of knowledge, he was alarmed to discover that in spite of its reputation for great intelligence and education, it was under the grips and influence of gods and goddesses, and like Paul would say, "gods many, and lords many." Luke reports, "Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city WHOLLY GIVEN TO IDOLATRY" (Act.17:16). The Message says, "The longer Paul waited in Athens for Silas and Timothy, the angrier he got - all those idols! The city was a junkyard of idols." A city of incredible intellectualism is also a city of so much religiosity. The Greek word for idolatry here is kateidōlos, which means utterly or extremely idolatrous. The people of the city were completely given to the worship of idols. Idols speak of images or things visible to the eyes. These idols are mentally contrived, spiritually imagined, and physically crafted. Luke tells us that "Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious" (Act.17:22). Athenians are not only intellectuals but also religious addicts or spiritual fanatics, and Athens being the land of countless deities.

Athens was the place where it did not matter what anyone believed. Luke tells us, "And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?… (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)" (Act.17:19,21). They listened to whatever tickled their fancy. It is the city where anything goes. A city where everyone is entitled to his own opinion. A city where everyone is free to air his own opinion. You are free to believe, serve or worship virtually anything and everything. And this sounds very much like our modern-day world.

We live in an Athens-like world where gods and goddesses abound. Even our '-isms' are deities, and at their shrines we bow. Humanism. Scientism. Materialism. Syncretism. Rationalism. Relativism. Evolutionism. Radicalism. Naturalism. Spiritualism or Spiritism. New-Agism. Individualism. Populism. Pluralism.

The list goes on. Our world boasts of higher learning, culture, and the arts. We live in a civilized world that is making giant strides in science and technology, and rolling out great innovations in all facets of human existence. Yet our world is shackled by the demons of a dry, empty, carnal and hopeless religion. All kinds of evil are being perpetrated by men and women who hide behind the masks of religion.

Like the ancient city of Athens, our world is full of idols. Man is constantly manufacturing, multiplying and worshipping his own gods. Like the people in Jonah's Tarshish-bound ship, everyone seems to have his own personal and private gods, and we are all individually calling these gods to save us as we live and journey through this world. The Scripture says that the mariners "were afraid, and cried every man unto HIS god…" Also, the shipmaster said to Jonah in that moment of heat and upheaval, "O sleeper? Arise, CALL upon THY God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not" (Jon.1:6).

Sadly, we deceive ourselves into believing that we are serving one God, only differently expressed. But Peter tells us without mincing words that "neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Act.4:12). Of the many gods of the Athenian religion, Paul preached to the gathered audience on Mars' hill about the "Unknown God," not about all the other gods. Jesus Christ says, "I am the Way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (Jh.14:6).

In the place of much education and religious confusion Paul could not achieve much. They neither persecuted nor chased him out of their city. It is just that they took his propositions and expositions as his personal opinion, and as something they might wish to listen to again at any other time. Only very few people accepted his message. There is no records that Paul returned to Athens again, nor that he founded a church there. He preached a great message, yet with very little effect. Paul's mission to Athens very much looked like a failed mission.

I pray that God will help His people to live in the consciousness of the fact that this world as it is, is not our home. Let God help us not to be carried away by its fashions, fancies, fantasies, comforts and conveniences, and to help us focus solely on the God of our eternal salvation. Lord, help us to know that this Athens-like world of ours is only a caricature of our real paradise! Amen!

by Bishop Moses E. Peter