PREACHING CHRIST TO A NEW WORLD
© Mark Beaird
Text: Acts 17:16-21
Are you familiar with the term Postmodernism? If you are not familiar with the term then you probably are not aware that the church world is being greatly affected by its impact. First of all, let me assure you that I have no desire to get into a technical discussion about postmodernism. But it is important for us to have an understanding of all that is affecting our work for the Lord. To begin with let us try to simplify the meaning of it all.
Stanley Grenz, a professor of theology (at Carey and Regent College in Vancouver, BC) and author of the book, A Primer on Postmodernism, has used the TV shows Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation to point out these differences adeptly.
Modernism, Grenz says, is like Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek series. He was part Vulcan and part human. Yet he always wanted to be more like his emotionless Vulcan side. Didn’t he? He was a man who wanted to be more like a machine.
Mr. Spock, an example of the modern man longing for more productivity and for empirical, scientific proof of reality. A fair description perhaps of the generation which produced the industrial and technological revolutions and the individualism which has characterized our country for nearly 200 years.
Postmodernism is like Data, the machine in Star Trek: The Next Generation who wants to be a man…who wants to feel and love and experience reality—not just know and analyze it.
Identifying perhaps more with Data, young people today feel more like machines who don’t know how to have relationships but desperately long for them and for a sense of community which most of their families did not provide.
Modernism is like Captain Kirk going out to conquer and subdue the “final frontier, where no man has gone before.” Postmodernism is like Captain Picard guiding his politically correct crew through space and helping to solve conflicts without stepping on anyone’s toes. Not conquering, but reconciling and making the galaxy a safe place.
Most young people today have been trying to avoid conflict all their lives, trying to keep peace while growing up in often divorce ravaged homes and emotionally scarring families.
In a sense, this is Postmodernism: a different, subjective, experiential way of looking at the world, and a deep skepticism which does not believe in moral, absolute or universal truths.
Can you begin to see the difficulty of doing a traditional approach to church for a very untraditional generation?” (Zafren 4)
If we hope to relate Christ to our world we must understand the changes that have come to America in the “Postmodern” era.
I. WE MUST BE AWARE THAT WE ARE LIVING IN A POSTMODERN SOCIETY (vv. 16-17).
A. American is detached from any common devotion (v. 16).
In Paul’s experience in Athens’s he saw a city filled with idols and given over to idol worship. This would indicate that polytheism was rampant. One does not have to look for long to find that America has fallen to the idols as well.
In addition, the people had no common religious foundation. Someone said that the cause of true Christianity’s decline in America is the disintegration of our culture. And as our culture becomes more diluted and diverse new religions are able to gain acceptance. No one challenges their validity.
George Barna, in his book, If Things Are So Good Why Do I Feel So Bad, writes, “The information barrage has led to a nation of people who feel culturally naked, personally disconnected, professionally perplexed, spiritually undernourished, and emotionally uninspired. Although we have the machines and the means to grind out reams of information, we have little grasp of how to humanely interpret that data or to wisely apply the accumulated knowledge represented in the ocean of facts readily accessible. (Barna 26)
B. Americans, by and large, have given up on traditional religious affiliation (v. 17).
This does not mean that no one wants to be a Christian anymore. Today as in Paul’s day, even in Athens, there were “God fearing” people (v. 17). There are still God fearing people around today, but the way people think has greatly changed.
As Barna writes, “At the same time that we have broader exposure to a variety of religious faiths, we appear to know less and less about what we believe and why we believe it. America has more religious institutions than any other nation on the planet—more than 300,000 churches, synagogues, and other houses of religious activity. But what difference does it make? We have forfeited our historic ethics and morals to the gods of achievement and comfort. Our moral compasses have been reprogrammed to point to a new north. Our sense of the divine has been compromised so that as a nation we have almost no awe of God or intention of respecting His rules.
We have replaced the presence of God with well-intentioned but superficial religious activity. We have substituted cultural idols for the eternal God. We have swapped the preeminence of the Creator for the centrality and pampering of self. All of these diversions have left us spiritually bankrupt, morally depraved, and ethically uncertain.” (Barna 26-27)
II. WE MUST BE AWARE OF THE RELIGIOUS MINDSET IN OUR SOCIETY (vv. 17-18).
Two extremes seem to dominate the American religious mindset.
A. Some are so “open minded” that they accept almost any idea as valid (v. 17b).
Apparently this was the attitude that Paul faced. These people seemed to be open to all ideas. It is not ironic though that they would reject the gospel of Christ—the only belief that called them to commitment or revealed their accountability to God.
B. Others have rejected traditional religion altogether (v. 18).
Note the two primary attitudes with which Paul was dealing and you will not that things have not changed. Also, note that neither line of thought makes any real demands on the believer.
“Athens was the home of the rival Epicurean and Stoic schools of philosophy. Epicurus (342-270 B.C.) held that pleasure was the chief goal of life, with the pleasure most worth enjoying being a life of tranquillity free from pain, disturbing passions, superstitious fears, and anxiety about death. He did not deny the existence of gods but argued in deistic fashion that they took no interest in the lives of men. The Cypriote Zeno (340-265 B.C.) was the founder of Stoicism, which took its name from the "painted Stoa" (colonnade or portico) where he habitually taught in the Athenian agora. His teaching centered on living harmoniously with nature and emphasized man’s rational abilities and individual self-sufficiency. Theologically, he was essentially pantheistic and thought of God as "the World-soul."
Epicureanism and Stoicism represented the popular Gentile alternatives for dealing with the plight of humanity and for coming to terms with life apart from the biblical revelation and God’s work in Jesus Christ. (Post-Christian paganism in our day has been unable to come up with anything better.) (Expositor’s Bible Commentary)
III. WE MUST BE AWARE OF OUR SOCIETY’S WILLINGNESS TO DEBATE RELIGION ENDLESSLY (vv. 19-20).
A. The debates are endless primarily because absolute truth is rejected.
University professor Allan Bloom writes, “Almost every student entering university believes or says he believes that truth is relative. They fear not error, but intolerance. They ask, ‘What right do I or anyone else have to say one (culture or religion) is better than another?’ … Respect for the sacred, real religion and knowledge of the Bible have diminished to the vanishing point.” (Bloom 26,56)
We have our own “Mars Hill” of sorts on many college campuses around the country as well as on television and in the print media. The debate rages and God’s Word gets pushed further to the side every day.
B. Our “new world” is marked by a love of ideas and knowledge rather than of God.
Like the Athenian world that Paul encountered people of our own world have given themselves over to their own arrogance.
Romans 1:21-25 & 28 tells us about such people, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
CONCLUSION
We must proclaim Christ to a society that we know has its mind set against God. Understand that the message of Jesus Christ has always been “foolishness” to those who were perishing. On the surface real spirituality does not sparkle to this world. A.W. Tozer wrote, “True spirituality manifests itself in certain dominant desires.
1. First is the desire to be holy rather than happy.
2. A man may be considered spiritual when he wants to see the honor of God advanced through his life even if it means that he himself must suffer temporary dishonor or loss.
3. The spiritual man wants to carry his cross.
4. Again, a Christian is spiritual when he sees everything from God’s viewpoint.
5. Another desire of the spiritual man is to die right rather than to live wrong.
6. The desire to see others advance at his expense.
7. The spiritual man habitually makes eternity-judgments instead of time-judgments. (Bible Illustrator 3: CD-Rom)
The good news is that at the heart of true spirituality is exactly what this society needs. If we will live our Christianity to the fullest the those around us will see its reality in spite of all the changes our society may go through.
References
Barna, George. If Things Are So Good Why Do I Feel So Bad? Chicago, IL: Moody
Press, 1994.
Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Gaebelein, Frank E., Gen ed.. The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: CD-Rom. Grand
Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
New International Version of the Bible from The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: CD
Rom. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Tozer, A.W. “That Incredible Christian.” Christianity Today in Bible Illustrator 3 CD
Rom. Parsons Technology, 1998.
Zafren, Keith M. Why A Church For A Postmodern Generation Of Seekers?
16 March 1997
