Have you ever been called ignorant? Paul Powell told about an uneducated pastor who preached about Balaam and the Donkey. Having been called ignorant by a critic, the preacher prayed, “Lord, make me ignoranter than a mule.” Powell observed the prayer was answered even before the man prayed.
The word ignorant has taken on a pejorative connotation in our day. Homiletics teachers do not encourage young preachers to start their sermons by calling the members of the congregation ignorant. But the root of the word ignorant simply means, “Not to know.”
If the people of Athens took pride in anything it was their reputation for wisdom. The city had produced Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The smart people of the city regularly gathered near a hill called the “Areopagus,” or Mars Hill. There they kicked around the latest ideas. To this hill, some of the intelligentsia brought Paul that day. They wanted to hear his strange teachings about foreign gods.
By the way, the marble stairs Paul walked up are still there, worn by time and weather. I ran up there one cool morning and tried to imagine this pugnacious, balding, bow-legged apostle (as a contemporary described Paul) speaking to the curators of ancient Greek wisdom and saying, “You are religious, but you are ignorant.”
To this day so many altars and idols are interspersed in the ancient ruins of the city. Paul reminded the Athenians of one of their altars to the unknown God. Then he introduced them to the God they worshiped there. Paul knew the God that they admitted they did not know. In his sermon, he tried to introduce them to him.
From time to time, I encounter agnostics who say, “We can’t know whether there is a God.” I appreciate their humility, but not their conclusion. They admit they do not know God. But this does not mean we cannot know him. Our God is relational. He wants us to know him. We don’t have to be ignorant of God. Whether or not we know him yet, he assuredly knows us. Paul would later express his heart’s desire to the Philippians in a letter, “I want to know Christ: the power of his resurrection and the participation in his sufferings.” This is our God. Do you know him?
