(Note: This blog entry is based on
the text for “The Higher Power” originally shared on June 26, 2024. It was the 317th
video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced
with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
The vast majority of those in the United
States who are not members of Christian churches or other religious
organizations still believe in God or in some “higher power”. How can they be
directed from a generic spirituality to a living faith in Jesus Christ? Today,
we’re going to find out.
The largest and fastest growing religious
group in the Unites States is those who, when asked about their religious
affiliation, answer “none”.
The Pew Research Center
says, however, that 70% of those “nones” believe in God or another higher power.
In addition, 63% believe in spiritual forces beyond the natural world. They
just don’t identify as Christians, or as any other religion.
The apostle Paul,
and the Early Church, lived in a similar environment as the good news of Jesus
spread.
Most people in Jesus’
day, and in Paul’s, didn’t believe in God. They believed that there were many
gods. Monotheism, proclaiming that there was only one God, was seen as
intolerance and as a threat to the Roman Empire.
We live in similar
times.
Martin Luther, the
16th century Church reformer, in his commentary on the meaning of
the 1st Commandment in his Large Catechism says, “Whatever your
heart clings to and relies upon, that is your God; trust and faith of the heart
alone make both God and idol.”
That is, whatever
you place at the center of your life and turn to in time of need is your god.
The 1st
Commandment is found in Exodus 20:1-3,
20 Then God spoke all these words: 2 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the
land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3 you shall have no other gods before me.
The Bible describes
God as the God among other gods in many places. What that means is not certain,
but there is certainly no shortage of gods in our time, by Luther’s definition.
Feelings come and
go, but the Word of God endures forever, and everything in God’s Word points to
the cross. That’s why there is a black cross within a red heart at the center
of Luther’s seal.
That’s why Luther
says, “trust and faith of the heart alone make both God and idol.”
It’s the death of
Jesus on the cross that saves, and His resurrection that validates it. They
are what point to the one true living God. Nothing less. And certainly not our
feelings.
They are at the
center of Paul’s witness among many gods in Athens that speaks directly to our moment
in Los Angeles, or almost any place in the Western world, in Acts 17:22-31,
The Apostle Paul was
on a missionary journey, and he had been taken to the Areopagus, to the high
court in Athens, one of the major cultural centers of the ancient world, so
that the court might hear what he had been preaching in synagogues and debating
with philosophers.
The hearing took
place in the middle of the Temple and cultural district of Athens, surrounded
by statues and altars, and Paul begins by making a local connection, in Acts
17:22-23,
22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said,
“Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the
objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To
an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
How do we connect
with non-Christian people in our day, many of whom may already be “religious”?
Paul gives us a template.
Paul had seen
temples to many gods. He had also seen an altar dedicated “To an unknown god”
in case, you know, they had missed somebody. 😊
Athens was a city
in the country of Greece. It still is, but back then Greece was part of the
Roman Empire. The Romans also had many gods, and many of them had been based on
the Greek’s gods.
The Roman Empire
couldn’t care less what god or gods their subjected peoples believed in as long
as they believed that all other people’s beliefs were just as true as theirs,
not unlike expectations in our own culture today. The Romans needed peace
within their empire.
Jews and the new
Christian movement believed that there was only one God and that made them a
threat. Therefore, Paul’s words were being listened to very carefully, and he
begins very carefully.
Paul starts by
describing Jesus as the god they don’t know, but very quickly moves on to the
proclamation of the Creation by the one true God, the God who created the world
and everything in it. He contrasts the one God with their many gods, in verses
24-25,
24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is
Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed
anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.
Paul speaks
directly, saying that the gods are created by human beings. God is the Creator
of all things. God needs nothing from human beings, but instead places
everything in the cosmos under the stewardship of human hands.
Paul carries the
distinction even further by stating the meaning of God’s Creation, with another
local connection, in verses 26-28,
26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole
earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the
places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him
and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28 For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even
some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’
Human beings are
finite beings so that we may be drawn to the Infinite. We were made for a
living relationship with God so that we may be restless until we receive it. We
are the offspring of God, and we long for connection with God.
Finally, Paul
brings the message home with the good news of God in the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. God is alive, and God calls all people to receive eternal life as a
gift in Jesus Christ. in verses 29-31,
29 Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that
the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and
imagination of mortals. 30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now
he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world
judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has
given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
Paul proclaims that
God calls all people to repent, to receive forgiveness, and to turn to new
life.
What can we learn
from Paul?
Paul begins by
saying, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.”
There are many
similarities between being “extremely religious” as Paul meant it and being
“spiritual, but not religious” as people mean it in our culture today.
I often think about a colleague who sat
beside a person on an airplane who, seeing her Bible, proudly described themself
as “spiritual, not religious” and said that they didn’t go to church because it
was boring, and they rattled off the things they did to serve themselves instead.
In reflecting on their
conversation, the pastor said, “I am always interested in people who find
ancient religion boring, but who find themselves endlessly fascinating.”
The god we make of
ourselves is very popular today, and it doesn’t even meet the standards of “a
higher power”.
The Christian
faith, the faith we proclaim, in contrast, is based on the belief that God
choses us, that we find ourself by losing ourself, and that the cross of Jesus
Christ is the only way that sinners can be reconciled to God and know their
true selves. It is personal and historical, it is incarnate in Jesus Christ. It
is not a vague abstract principle, but it is flesh and blood, suffering and
dying and rising for the restoration of the living relationship with the one
true living God for which we were Created.
Paul finds familiar
elements in Greek culture and religion and re-forms them into bridges of
meaning to the Christian faith.
What are some of
the gods that people have chosen today, and what cultural connections can we
make from them to the good news of the reconciliation to God by Jesus’ death
for us on the cross? Here are five of them:
First is the
god of the supreme self. Self-help books are a huge market in the United
States. For many a radical kind of individualism has contributed to what has
been called our true religion:
Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism, i.e. Moralistic, because its
emphasis is on being a good person who goes to heaven because they are a good
enough person, Therapeutic because it emphasizes experiences,
particularly feelings, that help me be me, and Deism because it embodies
the belief that God exists but is not particularly involved in our lives,
especially when we don’t want God to be involved.
How do we build a
bridge made of common values? By naming it for what it is and reaching people
with the genuine gospel at a point of their felt need. By forming
worship services that allow for the transcendent. And by inviting people to
empty themselves and open themselves to God.
Second is
the god of professional sports. Cultures once were known by their churches and
temples of worship, then by their great universities, then by their centers for
the arts, then by their large commercial centers, then for their entertainment
venues, now a city is known for their sports complexes. Professional teams are
valued in billions of dollars. Young people dream the dream of living in that
light. Youth sports have been pulling young families from churches for decades.
How do we build a
bridge made of common values? Through the Christian witness for priorities and
values by professional athletes, by offering the Christian life of love for one
another and service toward others in response to the love of God as a superior
alternative for defining what life is all about.
Third is the
god of my political party. It is the elevation of my political views into
something where any disagreement with them is evil and any dissent from them is
a form of heresy. Social media has greatly contributed to siloed lives. Many
worship the symbols of their nation. They describe their country’s institutions
as “sacred” and all their party’s leaders and history as being very good.
How do we build a
bridge made of common values? Paul was a Roman citizen and was proud of it; he
called for support of the just actions of the empire and for the good that it
did. Martin Luther wrote of his two-kingdom theology, that God rules through
the Church and through the governments of this world. He pointed out
that both should be held accountable for doing God’s will to promote the good
of all people. The blending of Church and State into a “civil religion” is
neither. We can be Christian communities that embody God’s love, focus on what
binds us together in Jesus Christ and not on what divides us, and by being open
to the primacy of the power of the Holy Spirit leading us forward.
Fourth is
the god of science. People will sometimes say, “I am a scientist!” in a
superior and dismissive tone that is expected to end all discussion about
religion. Yet there are people throughout history who have been Christians and
who were distinguished scientists. “Science” is a universally accepted method
for knowing things that can be measured in the natural world that leads to
building things. The outcome of science has been freedom from superstition,
higher standards of living, extended periods of health and longer
life-expectancy, greater convenience, and increased security. It has also led
to climate change, overpopulation, weapons of mass destruction, and the
alienation of humanity from its Creator and from itself.
How do we build a
bridge made of common values? By pointing out that our understanding of science
is based on the belief that there are laws that consistently govern the cosmos,
that science and Christianity are different ways of seeing the same thing, that
the Bible seeks primarily to answer the “Why?” questions and science the “How?”
questions, and that both science and Christianity can be used to destroy and
both must be kept in check by a divine authority outside of themselves.
Fifth, is
the God of relativism. People will say that all beliefs point to the same God,
or that there is no truth except how you chose to define it. Some will say that
all religions are true only relative to the way that we are brought up, which
is another way of saying that none of them are true.
How do we build a
bridge made of common values? By acknowledging diversity without concluding
that there is no truth. As a president of the World Parliament of Religions
once said, our task is not to find a way to say that we are all the same, but
to find a way to recognize our rival truth claims without killing each other.
Finally, how do we
make known the God who has made God’s self known to us in Jesus Christ?
We don’t. God is
already knocking on the door of every heart. We just name the Name.
We all have a story
to tell. It’s called, “How I became a Christian” or “Why I remain a Christian.”
We all have a question to ask. It’s “Have you heard about Jesus?” Churches grow
through the credible witness that comes through a friend or a relative.
We all can invite people
not to “come to my church”, but to “come and see how we worship God”.
We build paths toward
discipleship in our Churches that are made to bring people from zero to faith.
They are paths to holy living that are already present in Jesus, in whom we
live and move and have our being. There is no Way but Jesus.
We find cultural
bridges through the arts to others without compromising any of the truth that
is in Jesus, who is the Truth.
We pray about it
and ask God how he has called, equipped, and sent us to be His witnesses to the
world to proclaim the new life in Jesus, who is the Life. No one is too far
gone.
We have the “every”
to offer to the “nones” who already believe in God, as Paul writes in Romans
10:13,
9 For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord
shall be saved.”
The history of
Salvation is our worldview.
The Body of Christ
is our community. It is wherever two or three are gathered in His name.
We just point to
that which all people already know at some level, to that which is within them
even if they are not a part of a Christian community, to the “unknown god” that
they already know, and we let the Holy Spirit do the rest.
The Holy Spirit
calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth,
we are just ambassadors.
There are many
people outside the Christian faith, but no one exists outside of the love of
God. How do we build bridges to them? How do we proclaim the God who is
“unknown” to so many today, who has been made known in Jesus Christ?
We just name the
name of God, the ultimate, the higher and highest, and only power, the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and get out of God’s way.
