This passage from Acts 17 made me laugh in recognition. How many of us are like the First Century Athenians, followers of anything that is new: academic trends, social networks, the 24-hour news feeds? Paul’s message was simple: that the God and peace we seek is close at hand and the one we’re most tempted to overlook.
It should be explained that all the Athenians as well as the foreigners in Athens seemed to spend all their time discussing the latest ideas. So Paul, standing before the council, addressed them as follows: “Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious in every way, for as I was walking along I saw your many shrines. And on of your altars had this inscription on it: ‘To an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about.He is the God who made the world and everything in it… His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feeling their way toward him and find him – though he is not very far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist.
This is the New Living Translation.
I used to enjoy this song as a kid.…
http://www.higherpraise.com/Lyrics3/InHimWeLiveAndMove.htm
which is from the end of this section of Acts here.
Having read this section many times, at some point in my late teen years, I came to realize that religion is not a good thing. And religion is what Jesus came to set us free from. I looked up the root word for religion which is akin to bondage. This is when I became a total libertarian. I think our relationship with Jesus changes us personally day by day, and as we relate to others we learn and grow from each other. But every other human being that we are not in close relationship with should be given the freedom and grace to do as they wish so long as they do not harm others’ life, liberty or property. I truly see this as the only consistent non-coercion non-force message of the Christ. We follow him or don’t follow him freely. And we allow others to also follow their conscience on how they assign value to various things. Those things that we view as important like Jesus for instance is something we want to convince people of, but not force. The way of charity and personal sobriety is up to the individual, and they should never be forced by a church or the state to be charitable or sober. We should be influential in those and other areas as we follow Jesus, but we should never expect the police power of the state or the religion of the institutional church to usurp this personal responsibility we have to loving encourage our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc… to also follow the peaceful, charitable, and loving way of Jesus.