A couple weeks ago, the Stegall Seminary Scholarship Foundation sent me and a handful of other scholarship recipients to Greece and Turkey for a 13-day Educational Opportunities tour of following in the footsteps of Paul. It truly was a life-changing experience. As I’ve been processing all I saw, I’m blogging my reflections on this trip, particularly how we are impacted by things that happened over 2000 years ago. If you’d like to read my first reflection (that I actually wrote and published in Turkey), check it out here.
Throughout my travels in Greece and Turkey, I got to see several ancient cities. There were many unique attractions at each one—the towering Parthenon in Athens, the Library of Celsus in Ephesus, the river where Lydia was baptized in Philippi—but there seemed to be one commonality in almost all of these cities.
As you explored Corinth, or ascended towards the plateau of Pisidian Antioch, or meandered among both ancient and modern sites in Athens, one thing seemed to connect them all. At prominent places in the cities stood a temple to a deity. Sometimes, that deity was a Greek god (Apollo in Corinth, Zeus and Athena in Athens, Artemis in Ephesus) but other times it was a person, specifically, an emperor (Augustus in Pisidian Antioch and Hadrian in Ephesus).
Throughout the tour, our tour guide would occasionally tell us some of the Greek mythology or Roman war stories to explain why a temple had been built to a specific deity. While entertaining and creative, the stories seemed a bit… silly, I guess. They didn’t seem to justify creating a magnificent temple for a mere human or mythological god.
Just before the thought popped into my head, I overhood a tourmate whisper to their spouse, “It’s just so ridiculous that they would worship these fake gods.”
I was about to come to the same conclusion. But as soon as I heard that statement, I thought: Is it ridiculous? One of the things I’m guilty of (and I notice many others are too) is to think of people in today’s day and age (ourselves included) to be far superior in intellect than people in previous eras. We can read the pages of history and Scripture and think, “Man, they’re so stupid. I would never make such a mistake.”
Sure, in many arenas, we have more knowledge than they have. But are we all that superior to them? And just because we have more knowledge than them, are we really morally superior to them (as I often hear people insinuate)?
Because I’m guilty of such an error, I try to question myself when I think that people of previous ages are silly/dumb/foolish. Was it really all that ridiculous that they worshipped these fake gods?
As I thought about it further, I realized that whatever specific god the Greeks were worshipping wasn’t an odd character from the pages of a fantasy novel. Sure, they had carvings of those gods and gave them names and personalities. But what they were worshipping wasn’t that stone carving (even if they thought that’s what they were worshipping). They were worshipping what that god represented.
Let me break this down a bit further. Here’s a list of Greek gods and some of what they are the gods of:
Aphrodite: beauty, love, pleasure
Artemis: hunt, wilderness, young girls
Ares: courage, war, violence
Dionysos: wine, parties, chaos
Demeter: harvest, growth, and nourishment
Zeus: weather, order, justice
Poseidon: sea, rivers, earthquakes
Athena: wisdom, skill, peace
Hermes: travel, communication, writing
Hephaestus: fire, metalworking, crafts
Apollo: arts, healing, manly beauty
Hera: women, marriage, empires
This list of attributes that the gods rule over are the actual gods that are really behind the stone carvings.
Think about it: when an everyday Greek person in the 1st century BC faithfully makes sacrifices in the temple of Athena, do you think they’re ambivalent to wisdom and skill and peace? Or do you think it’s precisely because they’ve placed such a high value on wisdom and skill and peace that they need an object (the stone carving of Athena) to manifest their desire for the wisdom, skill, and peace that is their true god?
If this is truly what they’re worshipping, then let me ask you: is it really that ridiculous that Greeks from 2000 years ago worshipped these fake gods? Don’t we do the same today?
Don’t we worship a modern-day Aphrodite when we look up those pictures on the internet that bring temporary pleasure?
Don’t we worship a modern-day Artemis when we spend thousands of dollars trying to preserve our youthfulness?
Don’t we worship a modern-day Ares when we give a platform for those who choose violence instead of peace?
Don’t we worship a modern-day Dionysos when we turn to alcohol to ease the physical or emotional pain?
Don’t we worship a modern-day Demeter when we try to increase the “harvest” of our jobs, chasing that big bonus?
Don’t we worship a modern-day Zeus when we believe that this is the politician who will finally fix all of our problems?
Don’t we worship a modern-day Poseidon when we use tarot cards and horoscopes to help us navigate the stormy waters of life?
Don’t we worship a modern-day Athena when we think that one more book will finally make us smart enough?
Don’t we worship a modern-day Hermes when our Instagram feeds are full of travel pictures that incite us to envy?
Don’t we worship a modern-day Hephaestus when we craft facades of warmth and hospitality in our homes to cover up the bars that keep others out?
Don’t we worship a modern-day Apollo when our emotions are codependent on how well athletes possessing “manly beauty” perform on a field?
Don’t we worship a modern-day Hera when we think that the empire we live in is above even the slightest critique?
We could even go through all the deified Roman emperors and talk about what people worshipped about them—their strength, influence, looks, wisdom—and make comparisons today.
The crazy thing to me about all these gods is that most of what they represent isn’t intrinsically bad. In fact, most of it is good. As a Christian, I would go so far as to say that many of them—beauty, wisdom, weather, love, pleasure, and growth, just to name a few—are gifts from the One True God. But they are not gods.
Idolatry happens when we turn the good into a god.
Until we see the Living God as the source of all of those good things, we will always follow after other gods. We will follow after gods of achievement and fame and fortune and security. And they will all let us down. But the One who “does not live in temples built by human hands” (Acts 17:24) will always be the source of what we need, even if it’s not in the way we anticipate.
As I think back to my trip, I can’t help but think ahead another 2000 years. When someone excavates your town, what temples will they find? An office building? A computer screen? A travel brochure? A football stadium?
In 4024 AD, will someone walk through your town and say, “It’s just so ridiculous that they would worship these fake gods”?
I hope not. I hope that 2000 years from now (if Jesus hasn’t yet returned), someone will stop by my town and see something—a Bible, a church building, a cross—and say, “These people knew who the Living God was.”
Lord, may it be so.
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Hunter Bethea 
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