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Off the treadmill: Luke 12:13-21

The Christian faith is never lived, taught or preached in a vacuum. There is always an alternative to it: another philosophy, another religion, another ideal. “I see that you have many gods,” Paul noted when he looked around first-century Athens, and indeed the Greeks had a god for everything: for wealth, beauty, fertility, immortality, warfare and more. Statues of the gods were constructed to communicate permanence and power. The gods helped people orient their lives toward achieving these ends: becoming wealthy, healthy and beautiful and avoiding death.