Mark Tabata’s Weekday Devotionals
Friday June 26 2026
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Acts 17:22-23 (ERV)-Then Paul stood up before the meeting of the Areopagus council and said, “Men of Athens, everything I see here tells me you are very religious. 23 I was going through your city and I saw the things you worship. I found an altar that had these words written on it: ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ You worship a god that you don’t know. This is the God I want to tell you about.
Over the years, several people that I have been blessed to study the Scriptures with have come from a background of unbelief regarding the accounts of the Bible because they are similar in some ways to pagan legends and stories. For example, within many non-Christian religions (several which predate Jesus’ life in this world) there are stories of gods who enter the world through a virgin birth, live a sinless life, die in ways similar to crucifixion, who are then resurrected and ascend to Heaven, etc. It is asked, Do these stories not suggest that Christianity is just another legend among many? Why should we accept Christ and not these other accounts?
These are good questions, and thankfully, there are good answers.
Let’s consider the testimony of one of the most well-known former atheists, C.S. Lewis. While contemplating the wickedness and cruelty that exists in the universe, Lewis was suddenly struck with the realization that this all shows us there must be a God!
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet….Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 38-39 (Kindle Edition); HarperCollins E-Books)
At this point, Lewis then began to acknowledge that there is an eternal Creator. However, he was still not persuaded of the truthfulness of Christianity, precisely because of the problem of these pagan similarities to the Bible that we are discussing! However, he eventually had a long conversation with his friend, Tolkien, about the matter.
Then everything changed.
THOUGH MOST READERS ARE AWARE that C. S. Lewis, arguably the greatest Christian apologist of the twentieth century, was a former atheist, many do not know that his conversion occurred in two distinct stages. Before embracing Christ as the only begotten Son of God, Lewis spent two intermediate years as a theist, believing in the existence of God but still rejecting the doctrines of the trinity and the incarnation. Among the events and influences that led Lewis to make the leap from theism to Christianity, the most important was a long evening talk he had with a close friend, a devout Roman Catholic named J. R. R. Tolkien (author of The Lord of the Rings). As they walked along the grounds of Magdalen College in Oxford, Lewis confided in Tolkien that his knowledge of mythology (which was extensive) prevented him from accepting the gospel narrative as true. After all, the mythologies of the world were filled with stories of gods who came to earth, took on human form, died violent deaths, and returned again to life: Adonis, Osiris, Tammuz, Mithras, Balder and so on. Was not Christianity just another such myth, albeit a more sophisticated one? In response, Tolkien acknowledged the prevalence of god-men in pagan myths and legends, but then went on to suggest a different way of interpreting this phenomenon. What if, Tolkien challenged his skeptical friend, the reason that the story of Christ sounded so similar to the pagan tales of dying and rising gods was because Jesus was the myth that came true? Tolkien’s challenge revolutionized Lewis’s way of viewing mythology, and not many days would pass before he would surrender his life to Christ, the historical God-man. No longer a stumbling block, the ancient Greek, Roman and Norse tales that Lewis so loved would become one of the mainstays and bulwarks of his new faith. Rather than dismiss the miraculous elements of Christmas and Easter as having no more historical validity than the scapegoat tales of Oedipus or Prometheus (as many moderns do), or reject the myths themselves as either irrelevant to faith or lies of the devil meant to deceive (as many Christians do), Lewis came to view the myths as glimpses, road signs, pointers to a greater truth that was someday to be revealed literally and historically in a specific time and place. To quote Lewis himself The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens-at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle…. God is more than a god, not less: Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about “parallels” and “Pagan Christs”: they ought to be there-it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t.’ For Lewis, it is just as vital that we proclaim and accept the full historicity of the Christian gospel as it is that we celebrate and experience its full mythic power. Yes, Lewis asserts, Christ is more than Balder (or Achilles or Hercules or Dionysus) in the sense that his death and resurrection occurred in real time and had real consequences. But we must not allow his status as the historical dying god to rob him of his mythic splendor. Christ should speak not only to our rational, logical side, but to our sense of wonder and awe as well. If Christianity is true, then the God who created both us and the universe chose to reveal himself through a sacred story that resembles more the imaginative works of epic poets and tragedians than the rational meditations of philosophers and theologians. The historical enactment of the Passion did not render the old pagan tales unclean; on the contrary, it had the reverse effect of baptizing and purifying them. The coming of the Jewish Messiah made clean the lawless, nonkosher Gentiles (see Acts 10); may it not have made clean as well their deepest mythic yearnings? The relationship between Mary and the baby Jesus has made potentially sacred the relationship between every mother and child both B.C. and A.D.; in a like manner, the gospel story spreads its light both forward and backward to uplift and ennoble all stories that speak of sacrifice and reconciliation, of messianic promise and eschatological hope. It was through the Psalms and the Prophets, which were written in poetry, as well as the “epic” tales of the Old Testament-Abraham’s long, circuitous journey, Joseph and his brothers, the Passover and Exodus-that Yahweh prepared the hearts and minds of his people for the incarnation of the Christ. Is it so unbelievable that he should have used the greatest poets, storytellers and “prophets” of antiquity to prepare the hearts of the pagans? Indeed, as these pagans were without the Law and cut off from the special revelation given to the biblical writers, how else could God have reached them? Yes, God certainly spoke to them through the natural world (see Acts 14:15-17; Romans 1:18-20), but how was he to reach them at the deeper levels of their being? According to Lewis, before the full revelation of Christ, God communicated with men in three basic ways: through their consciences, through his historical struggles with a single, chosen race of people, and through what Lewis calls “good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men.”2 It has been the burden and joy of this book both to examine and celebrate some of these “good dreams” as they were distilled and reshaped by the finest poets of Greece and Rome. I have, of course, widened the scope of those good dreams to include tales and characters that embody pre-Christian themes and yearnings not directly related to the dying and rising scapegoat; however, I have tried to keep true to the belief shared by Lewis, Tolkien, Dante, Newman and many others that the light of God’s revelation shines (if dimly and intermittently) through the literary masterpieces of antiquity.” (Louis Markos, From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics, 2947-2982 (Kindle Edition): Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic)
The pagan myths were the shadows which pointed forward to the real Son of God Who would come into the world of lost humanity: Jesus. They then became the echoes that pointed backward, towards the true Messiah: Jesus.
Everything points to Jesus.
Will you not embrace Him today?
Acts 22:16-And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.’
Lord, we praise You. Everything in nature, and even the noble qualities found within all religions, encourage us to seek You. Thank You, Lord. Amen.