Xenophanes, gods, and sports.

I like Xenophanes, and I am always impressed by early thinker's and their theology. Often times I am astounded by the truth they discover with their limited resources. Xenophanes claimed that Deity, or at least supreme divinity, was singular and that it has a non-anthropomorphic form. He also believes that the olympic gods are immoral beings.  ". . . as they sang of many illicit acts of the gods thieving, adultery, and deceiving one another. (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians) I wonder how fellow Greeks would have responded to his claim, seeing that belief in the Olympic gods was highly prevalent at this point in time. On one hand Greeks were very open to risky ideas. However, on the other hand, Xenophanes was blatantly disrespecting their gods, and generally people do not take to kindly to that.

I wonder how Xenophanes affected future the Greeks' perception of the Gospel (assuming that they still cared about pre-Socratic thought. To be honest, I'm not sure).  On one hand he paints a very accurate picture of the Father, on the other hand, it is conceivable that he would reject the Deity of Christ. In a hypothetical situation that includes Xenophanes present in the proliferation of the gospel in the Hellenic world, I wonder how he would react to what Paul says in Romans 8:3 "For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh,".

On another note, I agree with Xenophanes about the over glorification of athletes. I feel that athletes in American culture are looked to as role models. Yes, I understand that what they do is impressive; however, I do not think that behavior should be modeled from them just because they can do impressive things. The notion that sports build character is one thing I find particularly odd. If this is true, then the people who play sports more often than anyone else (professional athletes) will have a most righteous character. However, a quick observation of the wild living of many professional athletes dispels this notion. Nevertheless, they are still looked up to.

( I'm not saying that ALL professional athletes are horrible people, and none of them are good role models.)

Zip it up and zip it out y'all.