Are You a Modern Athenian?

“That’s so fascinating.” That was the host’s reaction to his guest, who had just spent almost three hours laying out his pseudo-plausible, pseudoscientific arguments that 1×1=2, all of mathematics is wrong, gravity is an illusion, and chemistry, physics and astronomy must be reimagined in light of suppressed knowledge. This 2024 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience with Terrence Howard was watched, mulled over, discussed and then largely forgotten by about 11 million people.

Whether in long-form podcasts or in addictive short TikToks and YouTube Shorts, we are gobbling up infinite quantities of new content, from online courses to webinars to daily vlogs to multipart investigations to live-streaming talk shows that last 12 hours or more. Whatever your interest, whatever you stumble across, you can watch or listen to endless “that’s so fascinating” content, and an ocean more always remains just over the horizon.

The troubling corollary is that, while we ceaselessly chase the next new thing, we never hold fast to anything, nor act on it. Pursuing and seeking is goal enough.

We are the modern descendants of the philosophers of Athens. Acts 17 describes how these men asked the Apostle Paul, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean” (verses 19-20; English Standard Version). Verse 21 explains, “(For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)”

Nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

That same compulsion today is pouring forth oceans of media creation and its endless consumption. We want something, we recognize we lack something, and we are thus always searching. Yet no matter how valuable or powerful the content, we engage with it but for a moment. Then we drift on to the next post or show or article, then the next hundred or thousand pieces of content clamoring for our attention.

Acts 17 warns us that there is danger in this drift.

So much of these long-form interviews are a futile, endless search, always seeking, never finding. No question is too abstract, no subject off limits. Facts and opinions, truths and falsehoods blend in enticing prepackaged conversations available at the click of a button. Everything is worth considering. Everything is fascinating.

God tells us, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). The modern Athenians say, Question all things; consider all things; browse all things. And no matter what they discover or how good it is, they don’t hold fast to it.

Here is an important piece of content: “Sensible people keep their eyes glued on wisdom, but a fool’s eyes wander to the ends of the earth” (Proverbs 17:24; New Living Translation). A wise man fixes his eyes on wisdom. He will not be led astray by foolishness. A fool is continually scanning the horizon. He is distractable; he cannot focus. This ancient proverb shows that distractability is a perennial problem, endemic to human nature. It’s just that the Athenians of the high-tech information age have thrown it into hyperdrive.

Paul saw right through to the core of the Athenians’ problem. He also warned that our modern-day “perilous times” would have people who were “[e]ver learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). Does that feel startlingly familiar?

The god of this world, Satan the devil (2 Corinthians 4:4), works to draw people’s minds away from God’s truth. He suppresses the truth and casts it to the ground when he can. But when the truth is freely available, he uses another strategy: He obscures it within a blizzard of the knowledge of good and evil.

Satan feeds the insatiable spiritual void within man with stuff that never satisfies. This strategy is so powerful and so subtle that even when people encounter the literal, actual truth of God—the answers to their endless questions—the content that will fill that spiritual emptiness—people may like it, even love it. But they are already in the habit of treating it passively, grazing over it and moving on to the next thing.

This produces the dangerous scenario described in Ezekiel 33 of people who love listening to God’s message: “Son of man, your people talk about you in their houses and whisper about you at the doors. They say to each other, ‘Come on, let’s go hear the prophet tell us what the Lord is saying!’ … You are very entertaining to them, like someone who sings love songs with a beautiful voice or plays fine music on an instrument …” (verses 30, 32; nlt).

They’re sharing links. They’re telling their friends. But they fail to recognize that this truth is a way of life, that it requires action, repentance, change!

“They hear what you say, but they don’t act on it!” (verse 32; nlt).

We all need to slow down. Stop and think. Tune out the noise—and even the good stuff is noise if you don’t act on it. Find what is truly good, focus on it, and put it to use!

Beware the tendency in human nature to spend your time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.