Acts 17:16-32

I love this part of the Bible because it shows us how Paul engaged the cultures that he encountered and how he lived a missional life. There are a couple observations I'd like to make:

1. Paul was waiting around in Athens for his friends to show up. Instead of just chillin' and taking in all the wonderful sights of Athens, he becomes "greatly distressed" to see the amount of Idols in that particular city. Paul doesn't see his Christian faith as something that he "does" during particular times (Sunday mornings? Thursday nights?). His faith is a deep part of who he is, even when he is on "vacation".

2. Paul was very aware of and "greatly distressed" about culture. He studied the people's lives, their objects of worship, their poetry and philosophy, etc. (v. 23, 28). It is interesting to me how Christians usually take one of two hardcore black and white stances when it comes to living in and engaging culture.

The first stance is avoidance. These Christians tend to avoid culture in order to keep the evils of the world from corrupting them. These Christians may homeschool their children (for the purpose of keeping their children away from the public school secular world), avoid secular media, interact only with other Christians, listen only to Christian music etc. Some Christians have even created their own "Christian" subculture so that they don't have to be "corrupted" by the worlds culture. Christian music, Christian books, and Christian clothing are great examples. Instead of being aware of and engaging secular culture to further the gospel, these Christians are avoiding culture. They are not living missional lives because they are not aware of the culture in a way that they can understand and interact with people that need Jesus. (And they are probably not even interacting with them in the first place!)

On the opposite end of the pendulum is acceptance. These Christians have no problem living within culture because they completely accept the values and lifestyles of the culture. There is little or no difference between them and the culture. They are not "greatly distressed" about the idols within culture because they themselves have the very same idols. They may not be distressed because they may think that "all paths lead to the same place" and that everyone is okay as long as they follow "their truth" and are happy. They are not living missional lives because something other than Jesus is the first priority in their lives.



I can understand the "great distress" that Paul felt in Athens from personal experience during my vacation last summer. Lindsey and I stopped for a few days in Las Vegas and I was feeling the distress. It almost made me sick to see the things that were going on there. The problem is that I felt the distress but I didn't know what to do with it. Even now I'm trying to think of how I could have best engaged people in Las Vegas the way that Paul did in Athens. Any thoughts?