Berea vs. Athens

As we consider how we know the truth about anything these days, we would do well to consider the difference between Berea and Athens.  These two cities in Greece could not have been more different.  

When the Apostle Paul taught in the synagogue in Berea, he found people who "examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.  As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men" (Acts 17:11-12).  But when he went to Athens, he found a people  who "spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas" (Acts 17:21).  As a result, though he reasoned in Athens' synagogues and brought a message to a major cultural center, "some of them sneered, but others said, 'we want to hear you again".  Apparently the focus as well as the scope of people's search for what is true has a significant impact on their ability to recognize The Truth when they hear it.

Geoffrey Hinton, a founder of artificial intelligence, has just left Google to spend the rest of his life trying to deter the negative effects of AI which he sees coming.  He believes that it will render the truth about a matter indistinguishable from the lie, aggressively substituting its own version of reality.  Though this may be an overblown scare (some of us remember Y2K!), nonetheless it may drive us to recognize the only truth which will matter in the end: not the supposed facts scoured from internet intelligence, but rather the Truth of Jesus Christ revealed in the Scriptures, and in the Holy Spirit's Presence in those believers with whom we interact personally, face-to-face.  And none the more so when we come together to examine the Scriptures and to pray, and then to go into the world to proclaim and pursue The Truth.  This could be a kind of "back to the future" moment for us, when we return to the Foundation of our Life: Christ in the Scripture and in His Church, sending us into a confused world.  

So let's get a head start on regularly engaging The Truth, personally and interpersonally, so that we can hold to it when the world's grip on it fails.