Don Friesen
I'm usually fond of satire, but this week I came across a satirical piece that just didn't work for me. Patterned on the recent court-ordered breakup of Microsoft, the satirical piece reported that a U.S. District judge has ruled that God is in violation of anti-monopoly laws and the judge ordered God to be broken up into several less powerful deities. Calling the theological giant's stranglehold on religion"blatantly anti-competitive," the article claimed that God violated antitrust laws by claiming that He is the sole creator of the universe and by strictly prohibiting the worship of what God calls "false idols". ("Judge Orders God to Break up into Small Deities," The Onion)
The satire has its moments, like when it quotes religious experts testifying that they are not at all confident that this breakup is for the best, pointing to the chaotic nature of polytheistic worship and noting that "multiple gods demand an elaborate regiment of devotion that today's average worshipper may find arduous and inconvenient."
However, the religious reality today, even in the West, is that Christianity is only one of many religions, spiritualities, and expressions of religious devotion, and, truth be told, if Christianity is to endure, it will have to learn to compete in a marketplace of spiritualities.
Apologetic Christians
Competing is not something Christians of late have been in the habit of doing. Some Christian traditions are the beneficiaries of a state church mentality, and are only now beginning to realize that their people are gone and that Gothic real estate alone is insufficient to ensure the continuance of the Christian faith. Some Christian traditions, like our own, have been sufficiently insular that we haven't had to compete. If we can have enough babies, and convince enough of those babies to be faithful, then the Christian faith will continue--at least our peculiar expression of it. Some Christian groups, like the Shakers, made the tactical error of requiring celibacy, not only of their leaders, but of all of their members! The only thing left of that group is their furniture!
Some of us may not want to compete in the spiritual marketplace because we feel apologetic about our faith. Along with every other young adult of my generation, I considered joining a rock and roll band, but when the leader of the band discovered that I attended church regularly, he was furious and wanted nothing more to do with me! Yet another brilliant career down the tubes! No doubt this fellow had his own issues to deal with, but he made me feel as if I had to apologize for consorting with Christians!
Some of us find it easy to feel apologetic about our faith. Someone asks us about our faith--perhaps something we did inadvertently signalled our belief in a higher power--and we shuffle our feet, look down at the floor, and mumble something about liking church music and tasty potluck dinners or some such thing. Our response conveys a sense of low-grade shame, and given that Christians active in a Christian community are a diminishing minority, it's natural to feel that somehow we have to explain such strange behaviour.
Some of our apologies run deeper. In our New Testament epistle reading, Peter says, "Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you...." (1 Peter 3:15) It's hard, however, to defend the indefensible. Christians have found many ways of goofing up the gospel, and our present intellectual culture is only too eager to put our mistakes on display. The Christian legacy is not a pristine one, and we have many things for which to answer, but which we dare not defend--the 13th century Crusades, for example. They may have occurred 800 years ago, but they're not irrelevant to present-day conflicts, and have been compounded by other mistakes. Now, blithe references to these mistakes, based on a rather facile reading of human history, are challengeable, but it's uncomfortable trying to defend what is generally considered indefensible. Often it's not that hard to apologize for our Christian faith.
An Apologetic Paul?
Now, we may not be accustomed to thinking of the Apostle Paul as an apologetic person, but of all the places the Book of Acts records him visiting, Paul is at his most apologetic in the city of Athens. Paul was able to establish a church in Philippi with the help of Lydia and her friends (Acts 16:11-15), but in many other places he met serious resistance. In Iconium the apostles were almost stoned. (14:1-7) In Antioch they were stoned and thrown out of the region! (13:49-51) In Lystra Paul himself was stoned and literally dragged out of town. (14:19-20) In Thessalonica Paul managed to get the whole city into an uproar (17:1-9), enough so that the Thessalonians followed him to Berea and harassed him there as well! (17:10-15)
Paul went on to Athens, perhaps to lie low for a while, while waiting for his colleagues to join him. Athens derived its name from Athena, the Olympian goddess of wisdom, patron of the arts of peace and war, and ruler of storms. She was a virgin goddess thought to have sprung from the forehead of Zeus, and in the midst of Athens' many glorious monuments and cultural grandeur stood a colossal statue of Athena, so large that sailors could see the sunlight reflected from her upraised spear forty miles away!
The fame of Athens rested, first on its being the intellectual mecca of the ancient world, and secondly on the many religious cults that flourished there. The average worshipper in Athens did not find the "elaborate regiment of devotion" required of this plethora of gods too arduous or inconvenient. Athenian religious institutions were zealously maintained, and public sacrifices and festivals scrupulously observed.
The Apostle Paul could not leave well enough alone, for Acts tells us that while "Paul was waiting ...in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols." (Acts 17:16) So Paul went down to the "marketplace" where people gathered every day to hear the pitches of the various religions, and said to them, "I perceive that in every way you are very religious." (17:22, RSV) A rather bland opening gambit, for Athens was a city of so many gods it was said that there were more statues of the gods in Athens than in all the rest of Greece put together and that in Athens it was easier to meet a god than a human being!
In addition to being very religious, the curiosity of Athens' citizens was notorious. Our Scripture lesson tells us, parenthetically, that they: "...had no time for anything but talking or hearing about the latest novelty." (17:21, NEB) Or, as another translation states it: "The one amusement the Athenians and the foreigners living there seem to have, apart from discussing the latest ideas, is listening to lectures about them." (JER) Athens had earned and nurtured this reputation; 300 years earlier Demosthenes, a famous Greek orator, told the Athenians, "Instead of guarding your liberties, you are forever gadding about and looking for news."
Nonetheless, Paul entered into dialogue with the Athenians, particularly the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, who weren't impressed initially. Some accused Paul of importing foreign divinities. Others called him a "show-off" (TEV) or "babbler" (Acts 17:18); the actual word used suggests a bird picking up seeds wherever he can find them--an eclectic "picker-up of trifles," if you will. The Athenians weren't above pointing out your intellectual inferiority. Eminently tolerant and not wanting to miss anything new, however, they asked Paul to say more. They invited him to the Areopagus, a hill in Athens at the very centre of the city's life. Next to Paul stood towered the Parthenon; indeed, he was surrounded by monuments to the splendour of Greece and was about to address those whose philosophical heritage included Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. What could they expect from this "seed-picker," this hayseed?
I imagine it wasn't hard, in this setting, to feel apologetic about your faith. Paul began by telling the cultured Athenians, "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." (Acts 17:23) Doesn't sound very apologetic, does it? Sounds more like impertinence!
The word, "apology," as we generally use it, is an expression of regret at having caused someone trouble, but it has another meaning which makes it an very appropriate word to describe what Paul was doing. An apology, in the classical sense, is a formal written defence of something you believe in strongly. Apologetics is an academic theological discipline in its own right that dates back to the 2nd century (c.120-220 A.D.), when Christian writers known as "apologists" applied themselves to the task of making a reasoned defence and recommendation of their faith to outsiders. This is what Paul was doing in Athens; he was attempting to make a reasoned defence of Christianity in a religiously pluralistic setting, recommending Christianity to listeners who were open to hearing it.
Paul Apologizes for his Christian Faith
A Christian apology in Athens has to be crafted differently than one in Jerusalem. For example, to speak of Jesus and the resurrection was to use a name and a concept so alien in sound to Athenian ears that it would have little effect. To begin with the Old Testament, as he always did when speaking to Jews or Gentile "God-fearers" would also be ill-advised. Paul struggled to find a way to address intellectuals who searched for God, not by meditating on the history of a particular race, but by means of philosophical speculation.
Now, Paul was no babe-in-the-woods in these intellectual circles. Sure, he was a Jew, well-steeped in Judaism, the product of a very devout upbringing, and his distress at seeing so many idols in Athens was a characteristically Jewish reaction to Athens, for it violated the first two of the Ten Commandments! (Exodus 20:3-5) However, Paul grew up in a Greek city, received a Greek education, read Greek literature, spoke Greek fluently, and had a natural ability for translating concepts originating in one cultural context into another cultural context.
What Paul did, therefore, was to use the same language and arguments as had already been worked out by Greek-speaking Jews to commend the Jewish religion to those whose culture was Greek, and two points were frequently made in this Jewish apologetic. First, the statues and images and diverse cults of paganism were pointed out as being unworthy of the nature of God, as Paul does in verses 24 and 29. Secondly, it was held that all people had some intimation of God's nature, and so Paul points out, in verse 26, that Greek poets and philosophers had often come close to the truth about God.
Paul's apology in Athens were not an unmitigated success. Paul lost most of his audience when at the end of his address he mentioned Jesus and his resurrection. (Acts 17:31-32) A few people were sufficiently intrigued that they accepted the faith Paul was recommending, but one wonders if Paul himself did not consider it a failure. His attempt to speak to the Greek intelligentsia may have disillusioned him, for in his first letter to Corinthian Christians he says, with some emphasis, that the Cross is nothing but foolishness to wisdom-loving Greeks. (1 Corinthians 1:18-24)
Some of Paul's fellow believers may have wondered whether Paul was faithful to the apostolic message he consistently delivers elsewhere in the New Testament. Others thought: what can you expect of intellectuals? Paul was listened to with characteristic Athenian tolerance, and, while some scoffed, most dismissed him politely. The Athenians had heard many other such speeches and survived without a scratch or dent to their lives and character.
Paul had mixed success in Athens, but his address there occupies a prominent place in the Book of Acts, and Luke must have included it for a reason. Paul met the cream of Athens' intelligentsia on their own turf, quoting Greek poets and Stoic philosophers with ease. His persuasive defence of faith is well-crafted; his "groping for God" argument in verse 27, for example, uses an image familiar to every Athenian, for whom Homer and Plato were bedside reading. Paul uses the word and image used in the "Odyssey" to describe the blinded Cyclops groping for the entrance of his cave. Paul put forth the best apology for the Christian faith he could muster, and his attempt is quite amazing, even audacious, for he implies that even the most magnificent Greek art is irrelevant to the search for a God who is the Creator of this world.
Whatever the results of his visit, Paul's Athens speech inspired a host of thinkers and writers in succeeding centuries to mount similar arguments in defence of the Christian faith. Paul's approach was instructive to them, as it could be to us. His approach is conciliatory and courteous, yet tinged with the irony characteristic of Athenian speech. Paul was polite, but challenging. Some people are attracted to the Christian faith by a warm and loving spirit, but for others it's necessary to use arguments to dismantle unnecessary intellectual barricades to Christian faith. Paul was simply doing what Jesus did, using the intellectual currency of his audience to convey the message of God's love. What Jesus did with parables, artfully constructed to appeal to those who loved stories, Paul did with philosophical concepts.
Apologetic Canadian Christians, with Labels
Twenty years ago Christians in this city organized the Christian Festival, a large gathering of faith that was repeated in several other Canadian cities, and which continued to use the logo that Leonard Gerbrandt designed for the Ottawa festival. The Christian Festival was a celebration of Christian faith but it was also an event at which spiritual browsers were welcome. For example, I organized the "Marketplace of Possibilities," a building full of displays highlighting over a hundred Christian organizations that serve humanity in one way or another. Each organization had a booth at which they conveyed their particular approach to Christian service. The setting was much like what you might find at a computer convention or the Home Show. Some booths merely handed out information on paper; some booths had interesting displays; some booths were quite elaborate, like the one put together by the Christian Council on Justice and Corrections, which tried to give visitors a hands-on experience of Christian service in prisons.
Imagine such a marketplace of religions, where casual browsers might wander about, stopping for a bit at the Buddhist display, then the Hindu booth, and on to other booths--Falun Gong; Islam; Jainism; Judaism; self-described Pagans; Sikhism; the Wiccans--and then on to the Christian booth. What would the Christian booth have to recommend itself? If you were staffing the Christian booth, what might you say to recommend the Christian faith to passers-by?
While I'm somewhat uneasy with the marketplace metaphor, this is essentially the situation we find ourselves in, and Christians cannot assume that we don't have to give a reason for our existence. There are biblical reasons (Matthew 28:18-20; 1 Peter 3:15) to argue that we owe people an apology for our faith. Sociologist Reginald Bibby's recent research also indicates that many Canadians want to hear our apology. Bibby says that Canadians are spiritually restless. Apparently, the declining levels of church involvement detected in the mid-1960s and expected to dip to European-type lows of 10 per cent or less have not materialized. (Bibby, "Restless Gods: Implications for Restless Evangelicals," ChristianWeek, April 30, 2002) Bibby says that some 90 per cent of Canadians are asking ultimate questions about purpose and meaning and such, and some 75 per cent openly acknowledge they have spiritual needs. Christians cannot assume that these people will beat a path to their church doors, but they are eager for our apology, in the best sense of that word; they are waiting for some persuasive words that indicate that we ourselves have found hope in our faith. If we don't offer a persuasive apology, many of the other booths in the marketplace of spiritualities are more than ready to recommend themselves!
How might we apologize for our faith? According to some movies, like "Canadian Bacon" (1994), Canadians are naturally apologetic, so perhaps it shouldn't be that hard! Some of the apologies offered by Christians, however, are not encouraging. A Christian bunker mentality, for example, in which Christians interact only with Christians, is not an engaging witness.
Each year I receive a copy of a guide that lists Christian businesses in our area--a Christian version of the Yellow Pages, if you will--which encourages Christians to buy things from Christians. Listed in this guide are Christian electricians; Christian computer programmers; Christian bookstores; Christian newspapers; Christian counsellors; Christian advertisers; Christian accountants; Christian air conditioning contractors; Christian air duct cleaners; Christian apartment locators; Christian attorneys; and so on and so forth; the guide even includes Christian appliances! I'm not sure what a Christian stove does that your typical pagan stove can't do--perhaps it's self-cleaning, I don't know. You can get Christian plumbers to fix your Christian sinks; you can even get Christian window treatments. You can sign up for Christian aerobic classes as well as Christian recreational activities.
It reminds me of living in Winnipeg, where it was not at all fanciful for a Mennonite criminal to be arrested by a Mennonite cop, then to appear before a Mennonite judge, represented by a Mennonite lawyer, and when put on probation be sentenced to a halfway-house run by Mennonite Central Committee! Large city, small world!
No doubt some list their businesses in the Christian version of the Yellow Pages because they want to convey the notion that they will treat customers with utmost respect and integrity, but I'm not at all sure that that's a sure thing! For example, when I prepared my Lenten sermon on gluttony, I was surprised at the size of the Christian dieting industry. I was also surprised, though not impressed, by the competition between various Christian dieting businesses, each one trying to badmouth the other. Labelling things "Christian" may not be our best witness.
Apologetic Christians, without Labels
Some Christians are quick to object to the very idea of sharing our faith, asking, "What right do we have to impose our vision on others?" A friend of mine who lived in Latin America for years, tells about visiting Cuba with a Canadian Christian delegation, and once aboard the bus leaving the airport, one of their Cuban hosts asked the group, "Which one of you is the Mennonite?" They had read some Anabaptist literature, were excited about its relevance to their Latin American situation, and wanted to know more. I suppose my friend could have pretended to be mute, or said, "No hablo Español!" I suppose he could have been overcome with inhibitions about imposing his beliefs, but he wasn't, because he himself finds hope in his faith.
My friend says that he is often asked, "What right do we have to impose a vision or another denominational bias onto an already pluralistic religious scene?" To which, of course, his simple reply is, "We don't." He insists, however, that the question itself begs analysis, for it betrays assumptions that are questionable: "First, the question assumes that we could impose something on the Latin American church if we tried. Second, it assumes that the Latin American Christians are gullible and not capable of discerning direction for themselves. Third, it assumes that sharing our vision in the marketplace of other philosophical and theological visions is somehow inappropriate or ‘imposing'. Fourth, it assumes that the Anabaptist vision fragments rather than unites denominational emphases." "In short," he says, "the question itself reflects the paternalism that is inherent in our culture. It reflects the mentality it wishes to challenge." (Robert Suderman, "From the South Come Winds of Renewal that Will Change us All," The Mennonite, November 14, 1989, pages 510-511)
When Peter wrote, "Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15), he also counselled us to "do it with gentleness and reverence" (1:3:16), or "gentleness and respect," as another translation has it. (NIV) There is here a fundamental difference of approach. The"Christian-izing Christian" assumes that very few people beyond the small lifeboat of the "faithful" have any understanding of faith and that there is little of value to be gleaned from the experience of non-Christians; if it's not labelled "Christian," then it's not worth experiencing. If a "Christian-izer" came upon an altar with the inscription, "To an unknown god," he or she might simply lament the shallowness of no-name religion. I'm don't think that this is what the Apostle Paul was modelling in Athens. Though Paul was bold in his witness, he respected the intelligence of his listeners. Paul was trying to translate the Christian faith into the thought patterns of his listeners in an effort to convince them to accept the Christian faith. There is no question that Paul was trying to convey the Christian story, but he was open to the idea that God's Spirit may move through some strange, mysterious, and unfamiliar channels. Paul begins with his own understanding of faith, but then moves about freely, finding analogies and similarities to his faith in various places, events, and literature in an effort to convince others to share his faith.
Very briefly, what might this mean to us? I think Paul's experience in Athens encourages us to take seriously the Church's educational task, equipping our children and ourselves with biblical literacy as well as with an incisive interpretation of our faith in the context of current philosophies and spiritualities. Paul's experience also encourages us to share our faith, boldly, but without showing disrespect for the views, habits of thought, and attitudes of others. May God grant us the grace to do so. May God grant us a sense of devout rooted-ness in our own religious tradition, as well as the freedom to convey God's presence in whatever language and images seem appropriate to our time.
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.