for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
Paul said this standing in front of a crowd that worshiped dozens of gods and had, just to be safe, built an altar to one more they couldn't name. His answer wasn't to condemn their guesswork. It was to point at something they'd already sensed without knowing what to call it: that we're not self-sufficient creatures floating free, but people who live and move and exist inside something — someone — larger than ourselves.
He even reached for their own poets to make the point, which says something about how he approached people who didn't share his beliefs. He didn't need them to already agree with him. He started from what they already half-suspected and built from there.
You don't have to have a finished theology to notice that you didn't invent your own existence — that you're held up by something you didn't create and can't fully explain. Paul's claim is that the God he's describing isn't a stranger to that instinct. He's the reason you have it.
What if the sense that you're held up by something bigger than yourself isn't superstition, but a clue worth following?
A short video on this is coming soon — for now, read on.