It’s the 1st century A. D., the days of Paul, Peter, James, and John, and you are there.
What’s it like for those living at the time? As the average
Joe goes through the blocks of time of his daily, 1st century life,
what’s he thinking, seeing, and hearing? Is he different from us, those of us
who live 2,000 years later? The answer is, “Yes, in one way, he’s very much
different from us.”
PUBLIUS
Let’ change his name from “Joe” to “Publius,” and take a
look at him, this citizen of the Empire, a first century A. D. contemporary of
Peter, Paul, James, and John.
As Publius grew up, he would know the Lares and the Penates,
the special gods of his household, represented by small, portable, carved
statues. At home, he would learn how to worship these ancestral family gods. Each
morning, his father would lead the family to the little shrine in the home
which contained the sacred things of the family and the statues of the Lares
and the Penates. He would offer gifts, incense, flowers, or wine and pray to
the little figurines on behalf of the family.
THE DOOR, THE HEARTH
Then there was Janus, the god of the door, who would bless
the comings and goings of Publius and the family. Vesta was the goddess of the
hearth, to whom the family prayed before the main meal everyday. She was
important because everyone needs fire. Publius and his family would celebrate births,
marriages, plantings, and harvests with religious rituals.
SIGHT-SEEING
As Publius traveled through Rome, he saw and entered the great
and gleaming temples of the city, temples to the gods and goddesses, and would
interact with the priests and priestesses therein. When he traveled to Athens,
he would note that there was an altar with an inscription to a god or goddess
on every corner.
The temples were everywhere throughout all Italy and Greece.
Worship was organized under collections of priests.
In Rome, he would enjoy religious holidays once every three
days and could participate in the rites accompanying each one. When he was in the
mood to be entertained, there were the gladiatorial games dedicated to the
gods.
POLITICS
When he learned the politics of the Empire, he was taught
that the Emperor was also the high priest of the state, the priest called the
“Pontifex Maximus.” In the Empire, there was no separation of “church” (religion)
and state. The “church” was the state and the state was the “church.” The priests were elected officials; there
were augurs who had to ensure that everything the state did had the approval of
the gods. Something so common as the flight of birds and the feeding habits of
chickens were looked upon as messages from the gods. Upon the death of the Emperor, the emperor
became a god, and seeing a comet or shooting star streak through night sky
proved it; it was the soul of the deceased emperor.
Publius lived in a day of curses, incantations, gods and
goddesses and their stories. His history books told him of the assistance of
the gods and goddesses in the founding of his Rome; he had cut his teeth on the
ten thousand line epic, “The Aeneid” by Vergil which told of Aeneas, the founding
of Rome, and of Venus the goddess and mother of Aeneas, who protected and
brought Publius’ hero to the shores of Italy from Troy.
Paul, Peter, James, and John, along with the early church,
lived in a day where religion was everywhere and in everything, a day when a
person was enveloped in religion from day one, saturated by religion embedded
in his history, his home, his politics, his calendar, and his architecture.
Religion was ubiquitous in the days of Peter, Paul, James, John, and the early
church. It was to such gentiles they brought the gospel.
NOW, 2,000 YEARS LATER
It’s today, the 21st century A. D., and we are
there.
We have lived through days and now decades of a systematic drive
to eliminate all holidays devoted to, all references to, even all mentions of,
and all traces of God from our society. In world history books, Paul, who,
humanly speaking, changed the Western World, is rarely and barely mentioned,
only in a line or two, maybe. Students
learn little to nothing of Luther and the Reformation which shook the
foundations of Europe and brought light and hope to England and then into
America. The influence of the Bible on world history? Forget it.
There are words we are not to say, holidays we are not to
observe. Our school calendars give the students a “Winter Break,” not
“Christmas Holidays.” Our festivities
have drained the “thanks” from Thanksgiving, its historical roots expunged from
the record. Resurrection Day? What’s that?
A teacher forbids students from saying, “God bless you,” to
one in the class who sneezes. Crosses must be removed, the 10 Commandments
taken down; valedictorians can thank their parents but not God in their
speeches.
Lawsuits await those who dare to violate the expunging of
the historical record. An atheist organization threatens a Marine Corps base in
Hawaii with a lawsuit if their decades old sign is not moved to the chapel, a
sign which reads “God bless the military, their families, and the civilians who
work with them.” They are the latest in a long line of atheists looking for
something which offends them.
In our TV shows and movies, there’s a strange omission of
the church. Churches, pastors, Christians, and Bibles don’t exist on TV or the
movies, and if they do, they’re only there as a prop for a ceremony or for some
nefarious purpose. When in trouble, the hero of the plot never prays. No one
ever consults or reads from a Bible. In the movies, no person in America owns a
copy of the Scriptures, although there are millions of Bibles everywhere in the
land.
SO?
And there’s the big difference. Publius would have been
raised to think about the gods and goddesses; there was no way he could not.
But what we’re seeing in our day is a younger generation which has no ability
to think about God or spiritual and ultimate issues.
While checking out at a supermarket and with no one behind me
waiting for service, I asked the checker, “What do you think happens after you
die?” He was in his early twenties and when he heard the question, what do you
think he did? He just looked at me. He wasn’t insulted or upset. He just looked
at me. And looked at me. And looked at me. Then he said, “I don’t know. I’ve
never thought about it.” He was puzzled; he wasn’t trying to be evasive; he
gave an honest answer.
SURVEY SAYS
In our Survey Evangelism that we at the Hangar Bible
Fellowship do in public venues, we often get that same blank stare and that
same response to our questions about spiritual and ultimate issues: “I don’t
know.” “I’ve never thought about it.”
WHY NOT?
Why not? Why have they never thought about God? It’s because
they can’t think about God; our society has been hell-bent to remove all
references, spoken or silent, to Him. From history books to Marine base signs
to school calendars and classrooms, the erasures continue.
WHAT TO DO WITH THE BALNK STARES?
So, we need to back up and start with questions, not answers,
which would cause the staring ones to think about God in a meaningful
way—questions like, “If God does exist, do you think He would communicate with us?”
“If a Person did die and rose from the dead, do you think that would impact
your life in a meaningful way?” Such
questions would stimulate a person to thought. Christ irrigated His conversations and
discourses with questions. (That would be a good study: “Questions Jesus Asked,
Why He Asked Them, and What’s the Answer.”)
Such questions are what some have called, “Pre-evangelism,”
and are necessary before launching into the gospel message. Pre-evangelism is
to get the person to thinking about God and the ultimate issues of life.
I know, I know. You and I are anxious to give the good news,
but maybe we ought to slow things down a bit and develop and ask basic thought
questions. Basic questions about ultimate issues act as mental burrs; we can’t
get them out of our heads. They can keep us awake at night, tossing and turning
them over and over again in our minds.
It’s often the case that the more educated a person is, the
more he’s unable to think about God because, unless he’s been educated in
philosophy, such thinking is foreign to him; besides that, he’s busy, and after
a busy day, he’s tired. He wants to turn his mind off, and TV is just the thing
to do it. (Think: “Gilligan’s Island.”)
THE COMPARISION
We often make comparisons between the 1st century
Roman Empire and our day and find many similarities, and rightly so. But what
we face today and what the early church faced back then in this regard is
different. We have to adjust without changing the message.
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