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. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

                                                                                                                                           Acts 17:23

Et tu, Greece? Like many of my own friends, those Athenians hedged their bets. My friends say things like, “Sure there’s a God, but he’s my own personal God,” or “Dude, God is everywhere, he’s cosmic, he’s not in that little book of yours. Whoa, are these nachos spicy or what?”

My friends delight in the Unknown God, because the Unknown God is whomever they want him to be.

Poor Branding 

Some of my friends must be Athenian, because according to Acts 17:31, “All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.” Nice.

How they got anything done I don’t know, but those Athenians were a smart bunch. They knew it was only logical that they’d missed a god or two when their temples went up, so they devised a solution. They built a new temple, a temple to the Unknown God. And by “built” I mean they debated the merits of white marble versus that gold-flecked stuff they’re bringing in from Rome these days.

Nevertheless, the Athenians must have called a contractor because a temple did go up, granting God a No-Name brand status throughout the town. It’s the thought that counts, right? Athenians were all about thought.

Yeah. Right.

Re-Branding

Some of my friends have built elaborate temples to the Unknown God. Foregoing the Bible, they’ve gone instead with such solutions as the good deeds / bad deeds balance sheet or the easier-to-maintain Golden Rule philosophy.  “Just follow the Golden Rule,” says they, “and you’re… err, Golden!”

My friends don’t have Paul, the apostle who came into Athens and forced a debate over God as a concept versus God as… well, God.  Paul took a concept and gave it life, bringing God into focus as a somebody, a somebody who cares about every individual. He didn’t convert the Athenians by healing blind guys and making lepers’ fingers stop falling off; he just put it all out there and said “your No-Name Brand God let Himself be nailed to a tree so you could shed your guilt and live a life of freedom. What do you think of them apples?” The Athenians needed solidity to back their concept, and that’s what Paul’s debate gave them.

My friends don’t have Paul, they just have me. Healing blind guys isn’t my thing, but that’s okay. What is my thing is living the example. My thing is giving a name to the Unknown God.

What’s your thing?

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed