Athens is Subject to God Despite Itself
The structures that framed the creation before the Fall—or sin's entrance into the world—continue until this day to shape everything. Just as one cannot escape the pervasive influence of gravity while upon earth, man cannot escape the creation structures in this life.
This is true for both Jerusalem and Athens. Despite the fact Athens whole raison d'etre is to get away from God, it cannot. Even Athens, despite its most militant and hostile endeavours, finds itself being conformed incessantly to the divine structures that frame existence.
God breathed into man the breath of life. Try as it might, Athens cannot live without breath. Before the Fall, God instituted marriage. Try as it might—and the actual historical Athens did try mightily—the City of Death cannot escape being bound by the concepts and structures intrinsic to marriage. To be sure, Athens seeks to rebel and escape; it tries to attack the institution of marriage at every point. But it cannot help creating its own enervated alternative. Modern culture, for example, has created an idolatry of “romantic love” seeking to make it the foundation of human fulfillment and happiness. Witness the almost total pervasive preoccupation with romantic love in contemporary music lyrics. Yet the underlying principle to this worship of romantic love is that there is one special person that will complete me and make me whole.
The hunger to love and be loved in a profound and exclusive relationship is universal, and keeps bubbling again to the surface, even when depraved and degenerate cultures seek to suppress it. “It is not good that man should be alone”, is a divine declaration that shapes humanity everywhere, in every age, in every land. Athenians hate the God who decreed and declared it, yet remain bound by it nonetheless. Pity the Athenian who prefers his misshapen, caricatured, parodied existence to the wholeness and peace of Jerusalem.
The bearing of children is another creation ordinance which binds all mankind, all cultures, all ages. A culture cannot shut this off without committing suicide upon itself. Athens is bound into a fundamental conformity with God's commands, and hates Him all the more for it. Of course, individuals within cultures take rebellion to greater lengths. Criminals obviously exist. Libertines appear to flourish—for a time. Yet, in the end, Athenian society turns its back upon criminal and degenerate elements. It has to, in order to survive.
I was both sardonically amused, and at the same time thankful, to read recently one typical self-proclaimed, boastful, liberal defend, on the one hand, the rectitude of libertine promiscuity as a chosen lifestyle, while on the other, draw the line that such behaviour should be allowed for one who was “in a relationship” already, or was married. Sardonic amusement because the confused irrationality of the position is as obvious as a suppurating boil on the nose. Thankful because God's goodness and restraining grace has prevented this individual from being as wicked as he could be, and thereby the world is being preserved, so that Jerusalem might continue its work and service to the King.
The irony is that within the world-view of Athens, the criminal and the libertine, the murderer and the rapist, is being the more consistent, the more rational, and the more coherent with the basic assumptions and presuppositions of Unbelief. If Athens were able to be true to itself, it would celebrate and idolise the most nihilistic and destructive amongst us. Our boastful liberal friend, except perforce God reaches out His hand of mercy to save him, will eventually find that to be the case in Hell, which will regard his pale principles of fidelity to be treason against the very essence of eternal Athens, and will malignantly rape him, body and soul, for all eternity. May our Lord have mercy upon him, while there is yet time, before it is too late. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”, declares our wonderful Savior of mankind. “He who comes to me, I will not cast out.” (Matthew 11:15, John 6:37)
A further inevitable frame of creation is the duty and joy of work in the creation. Try as it might, Athenians cannot escape this divine decree. It inevitably forces itself onto Athens and into Athens, despite itself. The culture that stops working is the culture that dies. The modern world has tried mightily to escape God's ordinance. It has introduced all sorts of revolutionary concepts, such as “social welfare,” or “redistribution of wealth,” only to create successive generations of lazy, self-indulgent welfare slaves, which Athenian society then (irrationally) despises.
The upshot of this attempt to escape the command of God to work and labour in the world is that others have to work all the harder. The cynical bumper sticker, “Work hard, millions on welfare depend upon you,” is right on the mark—but either way, Athens cannot succeed with non-conformity to God's command to man to work diligently at subduing the creation to feed himself in order to live.
Thus, in Genesis 1&2 we have creation ordinances which all human cultures must conform to, in order to survive—including all Unbelieving cultures. We grant that this creates within the heart of Athens an irreconcilable conflict—for, according to the fundamental beliefs of Athens, these things ought not to be. But they are. Athens cannot account for this. It ends up insisting that its citizens conform to these ordinances to one degree or other. It ends up despising and making outcasts those who deny these ordinances in a consistent manner. Yet it both applauds, and hates their endeavour at the same time. Athens is fundamentally irrational. It wants to be free of God, but cannot be. It encourages and militantly fosters rebellion against the Living God, and yet hates those whose rebellion dares to be consistent with its own principles. It is intellectually and spiritually bankrupt—and always will be.
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