NOW IS NOT THE TIME OF MONSTERS, BUT OF MIDWIVES

 

You can hardly read an informed article on how global politics is changing today without someone quoting Antonio Gramsci, the Italian political philosopher who wrote this in 1930:

 

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters

 

He wasn’t wrong, when you think about lay head in the 1930s. And it has an eerie prophetic edge today, as well. We sense the world is changing, but don’t know what shape it will change into, and it makes many of us shudder. There are many reasons why more people today – adults, young people and children - are turning to religion and finding Jesus as they do so, but one of them is surely the sense that the world feels less safe and personal futures less secure.

 

Two years ago, I heard the eminent historian Tom Holland and the veteran foreign correspondent Lyse Doucet talk about Christian faith and the state of the world today. Tom Holland’s plea to the gathered church leaders was basically this: don’t act like you are just another social services agency, you believe some really weird stuff, and you should proclaim that weird stuff proudly because, believe me, the story of how a man crucified as a slave by the Romans led to the transformation of the whole world is impossible to make sense of, in my view, unless you factor in a supernatural God. Lyse Doucet, followed on with her encouragement to be relevant in how we preach and share this Gospel in a world of pain and suffering that she encounters on a weekly basis in her reporting.

 

Well, in St Paul’s visit to Athens in Acts 17, we find him channelling his inner Tom Holland and Lyse Doucet. Paul is relevant and unashamed in preaching what the Athenians clearly thought was some really weird stuff.

 

Paul is killing time in Athens, waiting for his companions to join him, and he does a spot of local sightseeing, a bit like you do when you race round museums to prove you made the most of a city break. Only his tourism was intentional. Athens was packed full of shrines to deities. For a practising monotheist like Paul, it would have provoked a strong emotional response – Luke said he was ‘deeply distressed’. But how he feels does not translate into what he does.

 

When people encounter something they don’t like today, they reach for their smartphones to condemn it and make themselves feel more virtuous. Paul could have stood on the street corner calling down judgment on others, but instead he drinks in the culture and tries to make sense of it. He doesn’t ridicule their customs in an acidic little post on Facebook, but searches until he finds a visual aid he can use to debate with others. The altar to ‘the unknown God’ is just what he needs, and he sets to work.

 

Our task as Gospel bearers today is almost identical. God is present and active in every culture, dropping a series of breadcrumbs to lead people along the way. We should engage with the surrounding culture with curiosity and an open mind. This culture is more fragmented now than at any point in history as the online world allows us to go anywhere. We still talk about the Church engaging with the public square, but there is hardly one public square anymore; instead we have thousands of inward facing courtyards. You may find there are few Christians in the culture you love, which makes it even more important that you pursue it. Like Athens saturated with gods, the breadcrumbs God is dropping for us to follow can be found in novels, music, art, TV, podcasts, YouTube channels, TikTok shorts, in sport and fashion, film and politics. Everywhere you look, God is loitering, waiting for us to spot the clues, urging us to make sense of the puzzle so we can share it with others.

 

In your life, spend time enjoying the rich cultures that people made in the image of God are capable of creating, but as you do so, remember you are a detective, figuring out where God has dropped those breadcrumbs and what that means.

 

Paul is not daunted when the Athenians demean him as a ‘babbler’ – the kind of putdown you expect on X / Twitter. In words that could be spoken of the world today, Luke says:

 

Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living their would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.

 

Instead of withdrawing for fear of ridicule, Paul pitches in. He finds common ground with the Athenians in the altar to the unknown God, but is unafraid to call out their errors. He embraces Greece when he says that from one ancestor God made all the nations and this is a relevant message today, as ethnic nationalism asserts itself. But he goes on to say that God is calling all people to repentance and is doing this through the resurrection of Jesus.

 

It was a calculated statement, guaranteed to offend. When you have lots of idols to choose from, you can pick the idol you like who demands the least of you, and so Greece was full of amoral excess because their religion was cost-free. One God, calling everyone to repentance because we all fall short of his holiness, was as welcome to them as a cold shower on a freezing cold day. The Greeks also believed the human body was a liability which the human spirit should aspire to be delivered from. The idea that the dead would rise to live an embodied life again sounded like the curse of karma, not the blessing of God. But it was a message Paul knew he could not compromise on.

 

I think the world is starting to change around us quite profoundly, and it is unsettling. But God is always a step ahead, with those breadcrumbs, leading us where he wants us to go. We have a prophetic calling to guide people to the truth of Christ, but to do so with humility and undefendedness, just like St Paul.

 

Antonio Gramsci was dead right, but maybe not in the way he imagined. The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters, he said. Our role is to share in the birth of God’s new creation. Now is the time not of monsters, but of midwives.