A statue to an unknown god
presented Paul with an opportunity to proclaim to the “extremely religious”
Athenians the God “in whom we live and have our being.” It seems such an
obvious mission strategy surely someone else had tried to slap a name tag on the
god “yet to be named” pedestal but then maybe the Athenians were just as happy
to allow this god to remain anonymous. Paul managed to persuade at least two
people, Dionysius and Damaris, but the absence of a New Testament letter to the
Athenians might be an indication of his lack of success. A good number of
people in our time prefer that God remain unnamed even if they might go to God
in times of crisis or for cultural rituals that still crop up in even decidedly
secular societies. The God not served by human hands still desires humans to
search and perhaps in their groping find the One who “is not far from each one
of us.” It looks to me as if God leaves a lot up to chance so it hardly seems
fair that a day would be fixed where ignorance is no longer bliss. On the other
hand, if the world is judged in righteousness by the man God appointed and that
same One named Jesus forgave even those who nailed him naked to
wood maybe the rest of God’s offspring have more than just a chance in hell to
bump into the God who died to be found.
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