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If you had lived as a new Christian convert during the rule of the Roman Empire, one of your biggest challenges would have been dealing with the pagan philosophical propaganda that surrounded you. I call it paganosophy. In a Greco-Roman city, most statues depicted partial or total nudity. In the gymnasiums, male athletes worked out naked. In fact, the word gymnasium dates back to the Greek word gymnasion, which literally was a “school for training naked.” Pagan Greeks and Romans insisted there was nothing wrong with showing off a well chiseled body. This is an example of what Paul was speaking of when he wrote, “They worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25). Roman bathhouses were a popular place for men and women in the city to gather. There were times in history when men and women would occupy the same rooms in the bathhouse. At other times, cities would make decrees prohibiting it. We uploaded a highly viewed YouTube video that we taped in Beit She’an, Israel at the excavated ruins of this Roman city that was destroyed by an earthquake in the ninth century. The city’s ancient public toilets (latrines) had been unearthed. In Roman times there were public latrines in different cities for the benefit of the citizens, since only the wealthy could afford private latrines. The toilet seats, made of stone, were a couple feet long, with one end connected to the wall and the stones resting upon a base with water running beneath for drainage. There was enough space to allow a person to sit between each stone. No archaeological evidence indicated that dividers were used, and as people sat side by side on stones in a public latrine, they discussed business. Deals and contracts were made at the public toilet. Some of the terms we hear today were coined at the Roman toilet. When a person says they have to “do their business,” they’re using a term that originated from men who literally conducted business at the toilet. The signage at the Beit She’an site indicates that men and women shared the same large room, with men on one side of the room and women on the other. Today, we find ourselves returning to trends from the Roman Empire, where men are allowed to use women’s facilities, if they claim to identify as a woman that day. Attacks against women in their own facilities confirm that many of these males are there to take advantage of a ludicrous idea being promoted by the same spirits of the ancient Roman Empire.
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