By the time Paul got to Athens, her greatness was setting. Roger Wagner notes that

The Roman poet Petronius, in his Satyricon, claimed it was easier to meet a god in Athens than a man. According to Pausanias, there were more statues of gods and heroes in Athens than in all the rest of Greece combined. This idolatry not only fed the gross superstitions of the masses, but in Athens it also coexisted with the intellectual and artistic pursuits for which the city had been historically famous. By the time Paul visited the city, however the intellectual life of the city was moribund.

The arete of the Greeks had a good run, but the Athens of Pericles and Aristotle was absent from the rear view mirror. What was left was lots of husks, the forms of a deflated idolatry which though lacking life still maintained the appearance of fullness. It was exactly this rampant idolatry that stirred up Paul to engage (Acts 17:6), and the results were quite good: some mocked, others wanted to hear more, and some believed and joined him including Dionysius who was an Areopagite (probably a retired ruler of Athens) and a notable woman named Damaris (v34). It’s interesting that Paul saw huge opportunity in a what appeared to be pagan stronghold. What many would consider a wasteland, his faith recognized as rich soil, and he started planting right away.

James Parker writes in June’s Atlantic Monthly about Lady Gaga, The Last Pop Star, whose “assault on the culture has been meticulous.” There is nothing to be surprised at anymore because there is no limit.

Madonna, Madonna of the conical bras and dancing myrmidons, had a similar thing going for a while, but tempered always with her rather frigid sense of self-importance. Gaga is post-Madonna and therefore freer: bandaged in yellow police tape or pounding at the piano with one leg up on the keyboard, she fears no trespass on her dignity. There’s nothing in Madonna’s videography comparable to the John Waters-esque sequence at the end of Telephone, in which a mass poisoning is perpetrated and fried food falls in lumps from people’s mouths. What does it mean, the image of an aproned Gaga turning a diner into a vomitorium? It means gaga, it means gagging, it means nothing. Or rather, right now, somehow, it means Pop. And who will be post-Gaga? Nobody. She’s finishing it off, each of her productions gleefully laying waste to another area of possibility. So let’s just say it: she’s the last Pop star. Apres Gaga, the void.

It kind of disappoints me that the end of the pomo pop culture road is fake-poisoning, fake sex, and a fake vomitorium, but I am coming to grips with the fact that the gospel really has slain the idols; unlike Voldemort they don’t come back in equal force. It’s sort of like a Marilyn Manson concert: nice makeup and fake blood–doesn’t anyone really worship the devil anymore? Apparently not, not in the Christ-haunted West.

The problem with having no limits is it means no surprises. Can’t we at least offend anew some baptist pastor? Not really. Unless you are really going to start doing the stuff (on TV) that you are pretending to do in the videos, no one is going to care. And you are not going to do those things because you are too Judeo-Christianized and afraid of the police. The motive might even be better than fear. If in fact Lady Gaga has lost the self-importance of Madonna, such humility could take her anywhere. If Parker is right and the end of Pop is really here, the time is right to talk to Dionysius, Damaris and all the rest who are tired of the baubles of burlesque. They are ready to pick up that telephone.