Counter-Cultural

“In Him we live and move and have our being; and indeed as some of your own writers have said: We are all God’s children.”

Paul had a difficult time preaching at Athens, the pinnacle of human sophistication. He didn’t like the town. Some Athenians didn’t react well to his street preaching; they called him a talking bird. But some philosophers invited him over to the Areopagus, their great place of discussion and decision making.

Luke doesn’t take kindly to the Athenians, either. About this invitation he notes that they wanted Paul to amuse them. They liked new fads and novel ideas. They were intrigued by Paul’s belief in a resurrection.

Paul’s main theme, however, was not the resurrection. The God he preached was not the God of one group, tribe, or race, but of all people. He was preaching the God in whom all of us “live and move and have our being.”

Paul had prepared his speech carefully, for at that point he quoted Aratus, an Athenian philosopher, who had written: “We are all his children.” If this is true, Paul explains, then we have quite a lot to repent for. If we are going to be judged according to that norm, our uprightness falls far short. Jesus lived that truth to the full; therefore he was raised from the dead.

At the mention of the resurrection most of his audience burst out laughing. Were they laughing at the idea, or did they laugh because they didn’t want to accept the Way of Jesus Christ, a Way that teaches us to love everyone—including our enemies—because we are all in the same way the children of God?

It is a Way that goes against the grain of this world: a religion that is counter-cultural. It is a Way that divides not only those who hear it for the first time, but those of us who are used to it.

To believe in the resurrection is not merely a brainy thing, it needs faith and a heart that accepts God-Mystery.