About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman

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Imagining The Apostle Paul Visiting Washington   


The following is my imaginative narrative of the apostle Paul visiting today's Washington DC.  I quote Acts 17:16 to 33 (NIV).  Bracketed words are the NIV words that precede or follow my imaginative inserted words.  Underlined words are words significant to the narrative.  

 

The text reads:  16 While Paul was waiting for them in Washington  [Athens], he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of monuments [idols].  17 So he reasoned in the church [synagogue] with Protestants and Catholics [Jews and God-fearing Greeks], as well as in the National Mall [marketplace] day by day with those who happened to be there.  18 A group of Republicans [Epicurean] and Democrats [Stoic philosophers] began to debate with him.  Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?"  Others remarked, "He seems to be advocating foreign gods."  They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.   19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Congress [Areopagus], where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?  20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean."  21 (All the Washingtonians [Athenians] and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest political punditry [ideas].)

 

22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Congress [Areopagus] and said: "People of Washington [ Athens ]! I see that in every way you are very religious.  23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your monuments [objects] of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: 'in God we trust' ['to an unknown god'].  So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

 

24 "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in a White House or the Capitol [temples] built by human hands.  25 And he is not served by politicians [human hands], as if he needed anything.  Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.  26 From one man he made [all the nations] not just America, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.  27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.  28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.'  As some of your own philosophical influencers [poets] have said, 'We are his offspring.'

 

29 "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like our economic, technological and manufactured advancements [gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill].  30 In the past, God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.  31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.  He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead." 

 

32 When Congress [they] heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, "We want to hear you again on this subject."  33 At that, Paul left the Congress [Council]." 

 

While studying Acts 17 it dawned on me that Athens and present-day Washington are similar in many respects, both having wide-ranging political and cultural significance, and thus my narrative.  Like Athens, daily references to religion, God, and even now, blasphemous talk of Jesus can be heard from Washington's political pulpits.  Note that while Paul was in Athens he spoke to the pundits, politicians and philosophers, not about a political agenda but about their ignorance of God, about Jesus' resurrection, about repentance and God's judgment, all truths that Washington needs to hear today, but aren't hearing.  The sad reality is that many claiming to be Evangelical Christian influencers have traded the life-transforming gospel of Christ that Paul preached for a political activism that transforms no one.  In my estimation, this demonstrates an ignorance that penetrates Washington that differs little from the ignorance that penetrated Athens. 

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