Imagine a sports-mad culture, deep into Eastern spirituality and political globalism, where ethical convictions have dried up leaving a moral hole into which rush the deep waters of religious syncretism in which paganism thrives. Where women, finding child-rearing an inconvenience, abandon or abort their babies with increasing frequency. A society where superstition reigns and divorce and remarriage touches everyone. A society overrun by sexual deviancy and perversion. Sound familiar? Such was the Roman empire in the 1st century A.D – the world of Paul the apostle.

A couple of years ago, I read Peter Jone’s book, Capturing The Pagan Mind; Paul’s Blueprint for Thinking and Living in the New Global Culture. The interim time period is proving the author remarkably prophetic. As Jones argues, “the inspired wisdom of an old, travel weary rabbi finds a new revelance in the postmodern world of the third millennium.”

The world of Paul and the culture in which he lived had striking parallels to our present-age culture and the world in which we now live. Christians can and should be encouraged by Paul’s example in how to reach a pagan culture for Christ. By looking boldly at the past and even more frankly at the present, focusing on the inspired Paul - what he did and said, and his example which is still relevant, wise and powerful two millennia later - can the contemporary church be empowered to stand strong as a light in an increasingly dark world.

I embrace the emerging, missional church’s call to look back to the ancient wisdom of Scripture. It is only when we saturate oursleves with gospel truth that we can effectively penetrate the pagan mindset with the Christian lifestyle and worldview, revealing who God really is.

We must be careful to distinguish between the ancient truth of the gospel, which in and of itself is truly timeless - and traditional ways of communicating that truth which may no longer be effective. God’s absolute truth is inherently timeless. Tradition on the other hand, is how a timebound generation attempts to communicate that timeless truth to its’ surrounding culture. Tradition - by nature - cannot be timeless. Substituting tradition for truth is a fatal error that ultimately dooms the messenger to irrelevance. Truth is the timeless weapon of devastating effectiveness in the war against paganism. Tradition is a tactic of varying effect. Let us be careful to distinguish between the truth of Scripture, which is our ultimate weapon - and the traditions of how that truth is shared, which are mere tactics.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (Rom 1:16)

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
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Bob Pratico
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
(my Sojourn blog)