While Paul waited for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to find that the city was flooded with idols. He began to interact with the Jews and Gentile God-worshippers in the synagogue. He also addressed whoever happened to be in the marketplace each day. Certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers engaged him in discussion too. Some said, “What an amateur! What’s he trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods.” (They said this because he was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.) They took him into custody and brought him to the council on Mars Hill. “What is this new teaching? Can we learn what you are talking about? You’ve told us some strange things and we want to know what they mean.” (They said this because all Athenians as well as the foreigners who live in Athens used to spend their time doing nothing but talking about or listening to the newest thing.) Paul stood up in the middle of the council on Mars Hill and said, “People of Athens, I see that you are very religious in every way. As I was walking through town and carefully observing your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: ‘To an unknown God.’ What you worship as unknown, I now proclaim to you. God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth. He doesn’t live in temples made with human hands. Nor is God served by human hands, as though he needed something, since he is the one who gives life, breath, and everything else. From one person God created every human nation to live on the whole earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands. God made the nations so they would seek him, perhaps even reach out to him and find him. In fact, God isn’t far away from any of us. In God we live, move, and exist. As some of your own poets said, ‘We are his offspring.’ “Therefore, as God’s offspring, we have no need to imagine that the divine being is like a gold, silver, or stone image made by human skill and thought. God overlooks ignorance of these things in times past, but now directs everyone everywhere to change their hearts and lives. This is because God has set a day when he intends to judge the world justly by a man he has appointed. God has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:16-31, CEB)
To an unknown God…
There are many around us who claim God is not real or doesn’t exist. That everything fell into place by the big bang or chance. And the way those who believe in God act I can see why people don’t want to see God.
But as Paul says to the people of Athens, God is not unknown or unknowable. God created everything and put into motion the things that made this world and all that is in it. in spite of the followers of God that do not understand science and how things are and default to a book written to tell a story of our creation to a people that did not know what we know. And now must say that that is fact or else everything else in the book can be questioned too. My thought is, let it be questioned. God is big enough for that, and God is bigger than that. A story written for people that have no concept of what we known now should not be stated as fact.
My internship supervisor taught me, that science tells us how the world was created and the Bible tells us who created. They are not at odds with each other. One says who, and one says how.
I believe in God as the creator of everything because there is no way all of this happened by chance. There are too many intricate details that make it to be far beyond chance for me.
So I love the ones who disagree, as God taught me.
Love. It covers the differences.
Loving People. Loving God.
aSacredRebel 