ATHENS. THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS: HOW HUMAN BRILLIANCE WITHOUT GOD MEANS IDOLATRY 9 SEP 2013

ATHENS. THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS: HOW HUMAN BRILLIANCE WITHOUT GOD MEANS IDOLATRY. The city of Athens has a history almost 4,000 years. In 508 B.C. it adopted democracy. For 400 years it was the center of human thinking worldwide. Who hasn’t heard of the physician Hippocrates & the philosophers Socrates & Plato? Athens’ playwrights & historians were incredible. I have been fascinated by two of the world’s earliest genuine historians Herodotus & Thucydides. The Greeks taught us how to think. The Roman built their empire on Greek thinking. The Greek language is far better for conveying deep thoughts than English. Its widespread use allowed the Scriptures in Greek to permeate the ancient world. Our Western Civilization is built upon Greek thought; & Athen’s great ancient thinkers are still studied today. Our word “encyclopedia” uses the Greek word “Paideia” (pedia in Eng.) which means education.
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Human thinking can be remarkable & impressive, and in contrast with animals, people learn just for the fun of it, whatever catches our fancy. The human mind is genuinely a miracle. Concerned people ask me, how can we protect it?? This post is part of the answer.
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The Apostle Paul’s trip to Athens is very interesting, esp. since he was a deep thinker himself, spoke fluent Greek, and knew their classic literature. In fact, his sermon to the Greek philosophers on the Areopagus follows the outline of Greek rhetoric starting w/ captatio benevolentia, and quotes several Greeks. (Acts 17)
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In short, Paul immediately noticed what Athens was famous for—the worship of all kinds of gods & idols. Their artistic brilliance was devoted in part in creating beautiful statues & pagan temples. The pagan philosopher said it was easier to find a god in Athens than a man. But centuries of brilliance had also brought with it pride & idolatry, rather than humbleness before our Creator. Paul decided to talk directly w/ Athen’s philosophers, & they were willing to listen to him—not from a conscience, but from curiosity. He begins by telling them in Greek that they are demon-fearing (i.e. controlled by demons).Acts 17:22 This is often translated “religious” or “superstitious” rather than its literal meaning “demon-fearing”. He challenges their philosophical reasoning with divine revelation, and ends by telling them bluntly that the “time for ignorance is over.” I believe one thing that bothered him was the waste of brilliance being squandered on idolatry rather than serving the Creator in beneficial ways.
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A modern depository of human thinking is the Internet, yet this fountain of human brilliance mostly gets used for idolatry. Yahoshua would notice the same dynamics & idolatry today in America which kept Athens in mental bondage. Find an attractive group think, and people will flock to it to be part of a group. Add an inspirational leader & make it a complete closed religious system, and you can create a cult. At that point, people who don’t line up w/ the approved groupthink are labeled “crazy”. The rest of the group crawl into their comfortable rut. Paul challenged the two leading philosophies in Athens at the time…they both had academies there…and both were rather long on theory & short on living a better life. Epicureans were lustfully hedonistic, and believed you could get relief from problems by the pursuit of pleasure. (Sounds like America.) The Stoics were the opposite; they believed success was to become indifferent to sorrows & pleasure. (No pain no gain. Grit your teeth & go on. When the going gets tough the….) Here in America, we let the specialist experts do the thinking, and Americans look to a life of pleasure to solve their problems. The exceptions are when people are, for instance, athletes, soldiers or astronauts, and then they are taught to be indifferent to pain.
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It’s a horrible thing to waste a mind. Yet, where is human thinking headed?? The PTSNB are enslaving our minds. Are students still being taught moral & practical things besides the intellectual?? Social skills & social studies are being indoctrinated in our schools, but critical thinking is not being taught. The students have been dumbed down by countless tricks. Thought control is widespread. It reminds me of Cuba under dictator Machado. If his agents predicted unrest, the govt. would advertise & then show lewd adult films in Havana’s theaters to distract everyone. In America, this is now being done on a grand scale. Drugs are also a tool of the controllers to keep us preoccupied & not reading good books & thinking. The churches are afraid of learning about the law, yet Paul said the law would be our schoolmaster to Christ. Yet another distraction to keep us from thinking is war, something most of the churches usually mindlessly endorse. My final thought is that it is sad to see such waste…. People need to be aware that we need to be healthy spiritually, mentally & physically to be a whole person. When we are in physical torment, that alone is a distraction. We can’t divorce the Spirit of God from our lives, without getting led into mental slavery by the godless controllers. Hundreds of years of Athen’s example as the intellectual center of the world gives proof that the godless mind, no matter if it is brilliant, will tend to wander into idolatry.