WHAT’S YOUR ARTEMIS
I gave a talk last year at PENN’s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship out of the book of Ephesians. I argued that the passage could best be interpreted by understanding that the context in which the author Paul’s audience was in was that of being surrounded by worship of the local deity Artemis. In calling his Ephesian readers to worship God, in other words, he was calling them to say no to the local deity. I then challenged the students to say no to PENN’s local deities – academic success, materialism, drivenness – and to say yes to Jesus.
I was reminded of this concept of the local deity when a friend of mine returned from Los Angeles feeling an almost palpable sense of vanity and image-consciousness there. I muttered to myself, “that’s LA’s local deity.” I have to fess up that I have an anti-LA bias, being brought up in Northern California and now living in Philly. But you can’t just chalk up my indictment of LA’s “Artemis” to just hating, because there’s some truth to it.
Another friend of mine is currently in South Asia serving as a missionary. He has told me of the village in which he lives and serves, and how it is literally under the power of a local deity who casts a huge shadow of fear over the residents. He prays daily that that fear will be cast out and replaced by faith, in the name of Jesus.
I tend to be skeptical of spiritual warfare talk, not because I don’t believe in it but because I know that taking it too seriously is worse than discounting it altogether. But I do believe in this concept of local deities and local idols. Ephesus, circa the first century, had Artemis. There is a village in South Asia that is governed by fear. LA’s idolatry is image. And Philadelphia? Where to begin? Finalists for the wrong kind of “American idol” include sports, patronage, and xenophobia. In the midst of all of our personal and metropolitan idols, there is One who invites, demands, and speaks: “You will have no other gods besides Me.”
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