The Mountain!

In the first century, Paul faced a situation very similar to what we face today. Today, instead of ivory tower academics, the world is filled with unvetted social-media and text-message “influencers.” These are those who destroy but cannot build. The rash of “itching ears” is everywhere, and only a few prefer wisdom and life.

Paul entered the legendary and powerful city of Athens and was surrounded by the seductive aura of “philosophies” and “gods”—claiming to satisfy that “God-shaped vacuum in every man’s heart.”

Paul walked through the spectacle of the Areopagus, Mars Hill, with a full sweeping view of the Acropolis directly across the valley—the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena Nike, and the other gleaming marble temples of Athenian religion.

Paul then came upon an altar “To The Unknown God.”

Paul then began to share with these high IQ luminaries in Athens “what Paul saw when he was blind.” What he saw is for us also. Humanity is inseparable by a mere tick of a clock, or a calendar.

Fifteen years previously, Paul, while still named Saul at the time, had encountered the Living Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus. This was NOT the Jesus that Saul had expected. He had been spending his days in anger and self-righteousness, hunting down followers of the Jesus who were messing with his religion and ambitious desires.

But God. Saul was suddenly blinded by the glorious light of the Jesus he thought humans could kill. Obviously, Jesus was far more than merely alive. Jesus was surprisingly made of different “Stuff” than Saul had ever considered, miracles or not. He was clearly not some human “teacher” as some had thought him to be. Religion and Rome had underestimated Jesus. It turns out He wasn’t on earth to start a new movement or religion to compete with theirs. He arrived, and proved Himself. He came to save and deliver and heal. For God so loved the WORLD. Religious leaders “crucified him out of envy” and in so doing unleashed the Spirit of God to fill His followers who had “the Faith of Abraham.”

And moreover, since Saul/Paul was stalking Jesus’ true followers, he was warned by Jesus that hating on and harming them… was actually attacking Him. Uh-oh.

Saul turned his life around, after a literal 72 hours of groping in his blind darkness. This had been fifteen years previously to his Moment with these Greek geniuses.

Listen to “what Paul saw when he was blind”—what Saul had discovered when Abba mercifully gave him a chance to humble himself, to stop “kicking at the goads” of his pricked conscience. Listen with your heart to what he said to the Athenians about Resurrection Life, Eternity-DNA replacing religion, worldwide, regardless of previous religion:

“I’m here to tell you about the One you worship without really knowing who He is. This God made the world and everything in it. Since He’s Lord of heaven and earth, He doesn’t live in buildings humans build for Him. He doesn’t need people to serve Him with their hands either, as if He were missing something. After all, He’s the one who gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

“From one man He made every nation of people, and spread them across the whole earth. He, standing outside of time and matter, has determined the seasons of all men, and their living situations and conditions. He arranged these practical things so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they, as though blind men, might grope for Him, and find Him. And yet, He’s not far from any of us. In Him we live, we move, we have our being. As some of your own poets have put it, ‘We are His children.’

“God overlooked those earlier times when people didn’t understand this. But now He’s telling everyone, everywhere, to turn their lives 180 degrees around. He has set a day when He will judge the world with perfect justice, through a Man He has chosen for that purpose. And He’s proven this to everyone by raising that Man from the dead.”

When they heard about the dead being raised, some laughed it off, while others said, “We’d like to hear more from you about this another time.” With that, Paul left them. Some men went with Paul, and put their trust in the message.

-Paul to the Athenians

In the Greek literature of Homer and Plato, as his Athenian hearers would recognize, this word Paul used, “psēlaphaō,” specifically describes a blind person. An insult? No, it was a courageous favor to them all. And in their heart of hearts, they could have known it, too. Some did. Some would later remember Paul’s words, when their hubris or worldly pursuits were finally empty echoes to them.

But… “blind”? That’s a lot. The picture is of one reaching out with outstretched hands to find their way, and to avoid tripping or calamity in an unfamiliar space—someone feeling their way along a wall, in total darkness. Paul was saying that even these academics, these theology and philosophy bros, were groping in the dark. Just like Paul had been in his fervent religion, until encountering the One.

This Jesus, who cratered Saul’s physical eyes to get to his spiritual eyes on the road to Damascus, was NOT just another “good teacher.” Saul/Paul realized only then that he himself, in all of his intelligence, was as “blind as a bat.” He took the opportunity to tell those in Athens—and our “first Adam” family in all the world, from Africa to India to Europe to Asia to South America—that they were born for more. These will always remain unfulfilling: empty religions, bitterness, prejudice, entertainment, rules, rituals, pride, power, reputation, and money.

And you’ll know that you haven’t yet laid down your “you” with “the Faith of Abraham”—“the full trust beyond calculation or conditions or time”—if the scales have not yet fallen from your eyes concerning this present age. “Though he is not far from you” and never has been far away.

All of the Greek and Roman and Mumbai and Saudi and Iranian and New York cultural “country code” religious traditions would have been different had a person been born in another time and place. But they all lead down the same dead end road, where comfort is not based on relationship but on hormone dumps and dopamine release. We can know this, in our quiet moments: we are all born for more than ritual, more than sacramental and symbolic placebo and shadows, more than hierarchy and systems “made by men’s hands.”

“No offense intended Athen-bros, since I know most of you have meant well in your pursuit of filling the God-shaped vacuum. But the material world, and intellectual and scientific gunk can’t hold a candle to Jesus. Look what God has done!” The bats in the “Cave of Furies” near where Paul spoke that day had better eyesight than all of the human intellect, of all of history and Moore’s Law combined.

By choosing to say psēlaphaō in front of an audience of Greek intellectuals in Athens, Paul made sure they knew exactly what he was saying. Paul’s point is both powerful and entirely “non-religious”:

God is calling even brilliant intellects, along with all men everywhere, “there is no difference,” to recognize that they, too, are like blind, try-hard people, feeling around in the dark for meaning and truth. Yet, while humanity gropes blindly as if God were distant, God is actually “not far from each one of us.”

Paul wasn’t trying to find a common denominator in philosophies, myths, and ancient religions so that he could “go along to get along” or so that he could argue with them. He was helping them realize that somewhere deep in your heart, there’s a hunger for eternity in your soul.

The same is true for us today. Self is always a dead-end. And, “try hard” will never get anyone off of the X-Y plane of flatlands and the Tree of Knowledge, to the place the True God of Creation is inviting us to share with Him. Adam and Eve made this choice of “being their own gods,” representatively, for all of us easily-seduced knuckleheads. It is the “Tree” where we think we get to be “gods,” “intertwining” our lives with our own personal definitions of good and evil.

Regardless of how fast or hard we run on the X-Y axis of religion or diversions, vices or pride, we will never “achieve” the Z-axis of the Tree of Life, where God is. The Z-axis is from letting go of our “rights” to let Jesus “be King over us” and trusting him, “no take-backs” ever. Covenant. His part is to pay the price of the Covenant. Our part is to “reckon” and trust that He has. “This is the work of God: To believe on the One whom He sent.”

And so! This is not about the parallel parables or common denominators “so all roads lead up the same mountain.” It cannot be “my religion is older than your religion so I must be more right than you.” It is about: wherever you are and whatever you are doing, you need Jesus—the One who brought Eternity to earth as no one before Him ever could—to fill that Eternity void. You and I need to come over that bridge to share His Life. Come TO God, and come to His Plan for you and for all of the human species who will give up their rights to be little gods. Lucifer wouldn’t. But, you and I can.

There are not “many truths”… Jesus IS the Truth.

There are not “many roads” up the mountain… Jesus is the Mountain.

So, here it is. The real question: Will you have this man be King over you?