That question can last for a thousand years, really, but it does address a significant point for the person who is asking it. Whether they be little or adult-sized, people usually need to know the reason for why things are happening. And that's a good thing, you know. It's a good thing to learn why it is that you do what you do, otherwise bad things tend to happen. I am drawn at this time to thinking about the shifting sands of the rules surrounding quarantine. As certain parts of the economy and services open back up again, we are left scratching our heads as to what is safe, and what is not. That is, why are golf courses safe, but playgrounds are not? Why is it safe to eat a plate of spaghetti from Jolibee's but not a plate of spaghetti at your Grandma's house? Those are great questions, and there need to be reasons for them, otherwise there will be bad results.
What do I mean by bad results? I mean that you can keep people isolated in their homes, staying far apart from one another out of sheer force of will for a while, but not forever. And eventually, people will pop their heads back up out of their burrows, and look around again, seeking freedom. And unless you have given them a good reason to stay isolated, they won't. Sure, you can close shops, restaurants, bars and hairdressers, but what you can't close are each other's houses, and if people want to get together, they will. They'll do this because people are ultimately self policing. It's sort of like back in the middle ages in which you could, through force of arms, government, and threats of burning, you could compel people into orthodoxy, but they are ultimately self-policing, and once the threats wane, people will buck the orthodox faith unless they've seen a very good reason to stay with it. And if you were counting on threats only, threats and punishment, then you'd better hope that your power and influence never wane, because as soon as they do, people will leave. This is what happens in homes as well, that unless your teenager feels a need in themselves to clean their rooms, eat healthy meals, and be responsible, you can make them do it while they're under your roof, but once they leave, if you didn't convince them that these things were in their best interest, then they won't bother continuing it for the future.
So, if that is the case, and we understand that it is the case, what do we do about being a Christian in the here and now? Because in Peter, he says to us 'always stand ready to give a reason for the hope that dwells within you.' Which we should. Your job as a Christian is to wrestle with God for as long as it takes for you to understand why his word says what it says. And that's hard to do. It's harder to do than you think it is, because more often than not, unless you know what Jesus Christ has come to do, you will tend to do the opposite. You will tend to, by and large, kick back against that simple issue, and will say instead that your job is to conform the word of God to yourself, rather than confirming yourself to God. But if you trust who God is and what he is all about, then you will understand what is actually being communicated to you.
When Paul is in the Areopagus, the people can tell that he is giving them something new. This new thing that Paul is bringing to them is the opposite of what all the other faiths, all the other idols that they can see. There was an altar, a shrine to an unknown god in Athens for a good reason, because any god that requires you to be good enough will always be unknown. It will be unknown because it will shift and turn all over the place. It will shift and turn based on those who are currently interpreting it. The standards of said god will always move and turn and shift and slide around based on who is looking at it and talking about it at any given moment. And that is how you can tell you're worshiping an idol, because it happens to line up with what you think on pretty much everything. When the faith you follow is looking for a perfect person, and those requirements happen to line up with exactly where you are, then you're worshiping an idol. And that idol will always shift its standards because while you are looking at it, it will line up with you, but when the next person stares into that same abyss, it will line up with them. And that's why it doesn't work.
The reason this happens is because we know that we are supposed to be good. We are supposed to be good, moral, ethical people who do the right thing, who behave in a way that God and man hold up as good, but we also know that the world is a busted, broken place full of bad news and bad people. How to square that circle? Usually in the assumption that people should be more like us, behave themselves, and everything would be fine if we did. But the Christian faith tells you a truth, a new truth that the people of the Areopagus were shocked to hear, and which modern ears still find shocking to hear too - that you aren't as good as you think you are. You need a savior. What God wants to tell you is not the simple message that you'd expect and that you hear from Twitter these days, that 'you need to be better.' No, the message of the Christian faith is to say that God is here to forgive you.
That's why Paul is well suited to bring this message to people. Paul is uniquely well suited for this role because, according to the scriptures, he is someone who prided himself on his place in the world, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, blameless, zealous in his persecution of the church, that kind of thing. But he counted it all to be rubbish because of the revelation of Christ and Christ's simple message - all that righteousness is malleable, and ultimately counts for nothing, because of the fact that our view of right and wrong, good and evil that just happens to line up with where we are standing right now is false and twisted. To have a truly objective view of right and wrong or good and evil, you would have to face the uncomfortable truth that the things you do that profit you, when viewed from the outside, are often bad themselves. And that's what Paul worked out.
His message to the people he was talking to was that Paul did understand the reason for the hope that dwelt within him - that Jesus Christ died to save sinners, of which he was the chief. Paul didn't hide his sin, cloak it or dissemble it. Rather, he brought it forward and told the world that sin was the reason for Christ. Not his lofty morality, his good behavior, or his good deeds, but his sin. That was why Christ came, lived and died. And the encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, his time spent with Ananias and the other disciples at Damascus, helped Paul to understand that his understanding of his own place in the universe was at best rubbish. But in Christ, there is forgiveness, grace, and salvation.
So, Paul comes into the Areopagus, and into our world, with a new teaching, telling and proclaiming that he is far from perfect, and in fact, has not come to bring a new moral teaching on how to be good. That is for the mass of idols out there. No, Paul is there to bring a new message - that Jesus Christ came to save everyone, including but not limited to Paul himself, an ardent, fierce persecutor of the church. And knowing that, the message becomes something that all of us can learn and hold fast to. Jesus saves no matter how sinful. Jesus saves no matter how far gone. Jesus goes after the one, leaving the ninety-nine. Jesus understand that there is none righteous, no not one. And once we understand that about our faith, we can understand that we are saved through his Grace. What a comforting message, and one that is best sent out by Paul, who understood that better than almost everyone else. Jesus died to save sinners, who would no longer have to hide their sin, but to understand that knowing how many sins Christ forgives, leads them to better love his grace.
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