We prefer our divinity safely packaged ...

Paul arrived in Athens and invited the Athenians to the unknown (Acts 17:22-31). The Athenians were acquainted with the idea that there could be something divine beyond their knowledge. Paul had observed that they had erected an altar "to an unknown god." But Paul also observed that given a choice between the known and the unknown, they chose the known.

Who can blame them? "The devil we know is better than the devil we don't know," we are fond of saying. The future is just about all the unknown we can cope with, and even that we do our best to minimize through horoscopes, popular culture's fascination with the end of the world, and diversified portfolios. The present, though, is something we have a high predilection to keep the same, even if our efforts are nostalgic or illusory.

We share this basically human trait with the ancient Athenians. We, as they, prefer our divinity safely packaged -- appropriately in gold or silver -- but in containers of our own construction. We, as they, prefer our humanity that way, too, safely packaged in prejudices and systems of our own construction, even if we are fond of attributing those constructions to God.

Paul will have none of it. He introduces the Athenians to a God of the unknown, one that cannot be constrained in any construct of human making, whether shrine or prejudice. It is not just that Paul exhorts the Athenians to trade the gods they know for the God he knows. He asks them to trade the gods they safely know for the God who by nature cannot be known.

http://www.thewitness.org/article.php?id=898