Reasoning in Athens

How can we begin to share the Gospel with people who have an entirely different world view?  Paul did it very clearly and reasonably in his speech at Mars Hill in Athens as described in Acts 17.  I was about to speak about this very passage last Sunday, filling in as the preacher at my church, and on my way there I reached out to a young Chinese man who turned out to also have a very different world view.  “Howie” is Buddhist, and like many of the people of Athens in Paul’s day he is interested in giving offerings at his Buddhist temple for earthly blessings, but when I began to talk to him about a Creator God who made us and to whom we are accountable, I could tell he really hadn’t considered the possibility.  He hadn’t thought of history in linear terms, with a definite beginning and progression through time, and so the idea of creation was foreign to him.  Like Paul, I concentrated on building a foundation of biblical truths about God, knowing that talking about Jesus as the Son of God without the basic framework of God as Creator would be futile.  Paul said “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.” (Vs. 24)  Like Paul, in a world that is increasingly biblically illiterate and religiously diverse, we need to be ready to share the foundations of the Gospel before sharing the Gospel itself.  I spoke more about this in my sermon on Sunday, which can be listened to here.