Avoid The Mob – Find Those Who Want Civil Discourse

Word-of-the-Day: ‘(22) Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. (23) For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So, you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you. (24) “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. (25) And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.’ (Acts 17:22-25)

Our nation is need of critical thinking and civil discourse.  Over the weekend there were national ‘No Kings’ rallies across the nation, with both paid and unpaid sympathizers protesting the President and his policies.  Unfortunately, the basis of the protests was based not out facts but of conjecture formed out of hostility and manufactured falsehoods.  It was especially troubling that these protests were formed by anti-democratic organizations (though some have ‘democracy’ in their names) that if they came into power would usher in the authoritarianism they say they are protesting.

The organizations and the demonstrators, as a mob, do not want to engage in civil discourse, at least in a way that will allow the provision of differing viewpoints to prove or disprove their agenda.  Without discourse, their can be no changing of an improper viewpoint.  In a mob, there is no critical thought that will allow reasoning or debate.  Mobs do not provide a means of debate, it either ‘my way or the highway’, and in many cases if one who opposes the mob will not allow the ‘highway’ to be an option.

Paul experienced the mob mentality in his mission trips throughout Asia Minor and southeastern Europe.  The Book of Acts provide example of when mobs, given life by false conjecture providing hostility and hatred through Jews who opposed Paul and his message of the Gospel and redeeming love of Jesus, were able to interrupt and interfere with Paul and his posse’s preaching and teaching to the Gentile and Jewish populations they traveled to.   

Paul was chased and stoned by a mob in Lystra, riled up by ‘Jewish’ Jews (those who disavowed Jesus) in Act 14.  In Acts 16, Paul exorcised a demon from a female slave who was a fortune teller.  The slaveowners enticed a mob against Paul and his traveling companion Silas into beating them and taking them to the Roman magistrate, who ordered them to be flogged with rods and tossed into prison (despite Paul being a Roman citizen which would have prohibited such treatment).

So, Paul knew something of mobs and how mobs could not be reasoned with.  However, in his trip to Athens (Acts 17) Paul met with the Areopagus, a group of scholars and philosophers dedicated on knowledge and thinking, a search for Truth.  The Athenians, especially the Areopagus, had some basis of truth, though based on intellectual conjecture and not of concrete evidence.  They worshipped the false gods of Greece and Rome (many had different names but were the same or very similar in stature and role, like the Greek god Zeus and Roman god Jupiter, for example).  They understood and accepted the inane feeling that there is a power greater than we ourselves, that the Universe was created and someone was in control, but did not have the proper information or access to Biblical Truth as Paul and the early Christians did.

The men of the Areopagus (and perhaps some women, though not likely) were into critical thinking, and civil discourse as they understood the need to do so encouraging further learning to obtain more facts to better establish the truth.  Paul’s example of his discourse gave the group the Truth of Christ, without ridiculing them or disparaging their beliefs.  He used their baseline of knowledge (the belief of ‘gods’) and a fact of their culture (a temple to an ‘unknown god’) to introduce them to the one true God, our triune God the Creator, God Manifested (Jesus), and God Indwelling (the Holy Spirit).

Paul builds a case for God through relating to them and their pursuit of knowledge, acknowledging the amount of truth they had and then filling the facts to provide for them the full Truth of God, using their terms and reasons to present them God – an omnipotent and omniscient God who does not need humans but one who provides everything for them and seeks their worship.  He builds up the credentials of God to have them think who God is, and as we all do, have them formulate questions to search further.  Not all came to the conclusion that God is the one and only God, at least right away and for some never did. 

We do know some wanted to hear more from Paul, and in several cases listed in Acts 17:34, Dionysius of the Areopagus, a woman named Damaris, and several others, followed Paul to learn more about God, and the Gospel of His son Jesus.  We don’t know what became of these followers but as with is evidenced in Paul’s other missionary locations, the seed of the Gospel was planted and churches sprang up, and people began to follow Jesu;, so it is likely they also came to Faith, accepted Jesus as Lord, and developed a church or churches based in or around Athens to worship the one true God.

Paul would seek an audience of those who wanted to listen to his case for our Lord.  To the crowds that Paul talked to, not everyone agreed with him.  Some asked him to leave or move on from them.  They applied their critical thought and decided they didn’t want what Paul was selling.  This happens today in our witnessing for Jesus.  We know there are those who will at least listen and then, at least for the time being, reject the Gospel message.  But Paul at least was able to present them the Gospel.

What Paul didn’t do was attempt to face the mob that, as a mob, he knew they would not listen.  He and his posse would flee to avoid the mobs that only wanted their opinion established as the only one acceptable to them (and beat him up), and not always escaped unharmed.  If we want to reach out to those who in such a mob, it is not when they are in their ‘mob’, but separately when they are one-on-one or in a small group.    

Individuals are, though not always, more willing to talk and take time to listen than when in the mob.  We must find ways to relate and find commonality (which is not always easy to do) to build their need for Christ upon.  The biggest need for them is the Truth.  You can massage the Truth but you cannot change the Truth.  Be tactful, but be unafraid and bold.

Those who espouse authoritarianism, immorality, and chaos are not of God, but confrontation will not bring results, only civil discourse and facts will.  Be shrewd and wise, but Faithful to the Truth!