To an Unknown God

One of my biggest frustrations with the cultures of our church and our country is the mindlessness that we tend to approach things with.  Almost daily, I get an email with numerous factual inaccuracies, listen to a minister preach the words of men rather than the Word of God, or spend time clearing up false gossip.

Too many people slug their way through life sharing a single brain with thousands of other people, often using that single brain to complain about how our freedoms are being stripped away by the right or the left.

As we continue our series on Primal with a week on what it means to love God with all our mind, Mark Batterson points out that most people have stopped living out of imagination and started living out of memory.  "Like teenagers who don't know how much they don't know, we're so proud of our one-dimensional knowledge of the Creator and creation." 

The truth is that our brains have the capacity to learn constantly for the next 3 million lifetimes.  We get lazy though and make excuses for why we're not constantly learning.

As a Church, we've actually managed to propigate this problem.  We've gone from being a place that people could explore life and faith and a leading place of learning to a group that protects the status quo and actually encourages groupthink. 

When we stifle creativity and progress, we lose the privilege of directing that creativity and progress in our culture.  When we decide that the Kingdom has come and shall never change, our influence is lost in the lives of people who need our influence.

Paul, in his trip to Athens, noticed at first that there were large numbers of idols (Acts 17: 16-28).  Among those was an altar with an inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.  No wonder, in the presence of so many pagan influences, someone decided to become agnostic. 

The scholars of Athens (the center of education at the time) hadn't eliminated false religion from the area, probably because their perspective wasn't a spiritual one.  Unfortunately, the local synagogue hadn't combatted false worship with any success either.  What this tells me is that the synagogue passed the buck for learning to the philosophers and opted instead for being protectors of the status quo.  Paul preached to reclaim that influence for the Athenians by pointing out the altar and saying, "Let me tell you who this unknown God is..."

How often are we guilty of defending the status quo at the cost of losing our influence in the lives of others?  How many times have we fought over trivial things only to discredit ourselves with the people we should be witnessing to?

As Paul was sharing the message of Christ in Athens, the philosophers that gathered around quickly dismissed Paul as a "babbler."  Now, there is the fact that the message of God confounds human wisdom, but I believe this name calling went even further than that.  I believe that this message challenged the status quo for the philosophers and threatened their own authority within the culture.

If we, as members of the Church, desire to love God with all our minds, then perhaps we should look at what our true goals are (hint: see Matthew 28) and what we're doing to move toward that goal as well as what we're doing to hinder our own progress.

Are we aspiring to a greater life, to the coming of God's Kingdom, or have we settled for what we have and feel like we have to defend what's left as it erodes under secular influence?  I believe that if we aspire to greater life, to lifelong learning, and exploration of God's creation, we will draw a crowd and win influence because we will be the people that others want to be around. 

How badly do you want to spend this afternoon with someone who is dull and non-ambitious?  How willing are you to take the advice of someone who has settled for a meager life over someone who has experienced the fullness of the life God has given them?

God doesn't need to be unknown to the world.  But in order for Him to be known, we must first know Him and then be able to help others meet Him.