Athenian Idol

Acts 17 

Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.


"The one positive statement that Socrates seems to have made is a definition of virtue (areté): "virtue is knowledge." If one knows the good, one will always do the good. It follows, then, that anyone who does anything wrong doesn't really know what the good is." (Richard Hooker)


If there is a philosophical idol today that parallels the philosophical idol of ancient Athens, it is this: With the acquisition of knowledge, humanity can be good. That is, our evil is a result of ignorance. What a contrast to Paul's statement in Romans 7 that although he knows the good, he does not do it. Like all philosophical musings, there are pragmatic consequences to what we believe. What starts out in the Ivory Tower doesn't stay there...the Ivory Tower--the human mind--is an idol factory...John Calvin wrote, “the human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols." Ancient Greece, a city of thousands of idols, had three of particular prominence: "Lust, Fame, and Shame." How true is it that the pursuit of the first two often leads to the third. 


JFK stated, "Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings." 


As a pragmatist, I agree that if one makes a mess, it is imperative that this person cleans it up. It is a good way to not to want make messes again. This is called a negative feedback loop. Or, as modern psychology has lifted biblical ideas, removed God, and offered insight, the Scriptural lesson is "God is not mocked, whatever a man sows, so shall he reap." 


Yet, there are messes too big to clean up. Our capacity to do good cannot compensate for our ability to do evil. There is a story about a man who said something untrue about another man which sullied the innocent man's reputation. The guilty man went to his priest to confess his sin. The priest counseled him, as an act of penance, to cut open a pillow full of feathers and release the feathers into the wind. Easy enough eh? Until the second part of the penance was revealed: He was to go and collect the feathers.

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