We were made to worship. We can't not worship. Attribute it to that "God-shaped hole" or whatever, but because God made us for relationship with him, and since God designed us to desire connection with something outside of ourselves (ideally, other people), we come hardwired with the desire to follow, to tap into something larger, to connect. And the fall of mankind didn't eradicate this need, it only perverted it.
By design, we want to worship. And this is why we are all idolaters: because we are constantly worshiping. When we move away, even subtly from worshiping the God of the Universe, it's not because we've stopped worshiping. We've just started worshiping something else.
Perhaps you know the story of the Israelites in the desert. Moses is their leader and priest, and at one point, he has made one of his treks up the mountainside to commune with the Lord, and the natives down below get restless. Apparently Moses is taking too long.
I don't know about you, but I've been there, done that, already lost the T-shirt.
God is taking too long to deliver, at least by my own standard of time, and in that gap that dangerous gap of time that fosters impatience over God not obeying my time schedule the lure of idolatry is so strong. Moses takes too long and the Israelites want something to worship! So they ask Aaron, Moses' brother, for something to worship. Aaron passes the plate and the next thing you know, the Israelites are worshiping a golden calf.
They had to have something to worship. And the whole word of the Lord from Moses was taking too long, so in that dangerous gap of waiting on God which is one of the hardest, but also one of the most important, aspects of discipleship they turned their affection to an idol. And their grumbling ceased. For the time being. They made the golden calf, worshipped at its altar, and then went about their business. They ate, drank, got up and played. Some translations say "rose up in their revelry." The calf satisfied their need for worship (at least temporarily), and so they went about their life. They weren't following God, but they assumed worshiping the calf sufficed.
These were people who had witnessed the succession of plagues God sent to coerce Pharaoh into letting them out of their Egyptian bondage. They had witnessed the horror and the deliverance of the Passover. They had made a daring escape and witnessed God parting the sea. They had been led through the desert by a pillar of fire and a cloud of smoke. They were not ignorant of God's might and power and awesome provision for them. And given just a little lull, look how quickly they turned to a dead statue.
We may look down on them, but can we honestly say we're any different? Some of us have seen firsthand the love and grace of God work miracles in our lives and the lives of those around us. If you are a follower of Jesus, you have the most crucial miracle of all, your own salvation from sin, to look back on, to anchor you and guide you. But rather than embrace faith in the times of waiting and wandering, our impatience takes over. We are always always! worshiping something.
The story does not end well. The Lord is understandably angry and he holds out to Moses the prospect of destroying all the idolaters, but because of Moses' intercession and the grace of God, they are spared. But God's wrath on idolatry is still poured out. Moses rages down the mountain and furiously breaks the tablets the Lord had given him. He takes the calf, melts it, makes it into soup, and makes the children of Israel eat it.
Talk about killing your idols! How about eating your idols?
The lesson there is maybe subtle, but it is harsh if you're going to trust in something dead to give you life, you're going to subsist on all it can provide, which is nothing. Gold may be costly and it may look good, but I'm sure it doesn't taste too good, or sit too well in your stomach.
It is so easy to fall into idolatry, because we were made to worship. Like the children of Israel in the desert, we want those golden calves in our lives. Don't fool yourself into thinking you are immune.
Paul recalls these wayward Israelites in 1 Corinthians 10:12 when he says to us: "Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall."
This means it can happen to us.
Few of us will likely end up worshiping a literal idol. I doubt any of us has a golden calf in our living room. None of us, more than likely, is going to go from the worship of Jesus to the worship of a literal idol. But if you read that story about the golden calf one thing that can kinda go by unnoticed is that they attributed their worship to the Lord. Aaron said they were gonna have a feast to the LORD. And they danced around the calf and made offerings, and said it was all about worship to YHWH . So if they're saying it's about God, what was wrong with it, really?
Well, aside from the fact that God explicitly says in the second commandment not to make idols I mean, that's a biggie right there the truth of the matter is that, even if you say you are worshiping God, if you are orienting your life and making sacrifices for something you have made with your hands, it is still idolatry. It doesn't matter how godly a spin you put on it idolatry is still idolatry. And this is where we go off the rails, we Christians. The main thrust of this series is to expose and illuminate the idols we as Christians in the Church fall prey to, and they are often not things false religions on the surface. We're not explicitly worshiping the Sun god Ra or whatever. We are always saying we are followers of Jesus. But that does not exempt us from the idolatry we practice as we follow someone or something else.
In our world, we will call this religion. Dead religion, to be more specific. See it doesn't matter how often you talk about God, how much you say you love God, how close you appear to be to God if it is all appearance, while you really are worshiping the illusion of closeness to God you are worshiping the idol of religion. This is Spiritless spirituality. It has all the appearances of rigorous, vital connection to God, but it is for show.
Or it is for our own satisfaction. That's an idol unto itself also. You can do all kinds of good works, follow the Bible's instructions, go to church, have your quiet time, help old ladies across the street . . . but if it is to make you feel better about yourself, of it's to somehow earn religious points, or if it's to satisfy some vague spiritual concept you aspire to, it's worthless.
Jesus had a word for this sort of practical idolatry, the kind that looked holy on the surface: he called it hypocrisy.
Some of us do all the acceptable churchy things and figure that gets us in good with God. We serve and sacrifice and figure that earns us the ticket. When God says "To obey is better than sacrifice." Did you know that? Yeah, it's in there. You can sacrifice and serve all you want, but if your heart is not handed over to God in commitment to following, it doesn't matter how much you give. If it's all you-centered, regardless of how God- or others-directed it looks, it's idolatry. It's self-worship.
The Pharisees had the sacrifice and service thing down. They were experts. By all appearances, they were shoo-ins for the kingdom of God. Because they relentlessly, rigorously followed the Law, practiced religion. But what does Jesus say? He quotes Isaiah: "You honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me." Hypocrites.
Is that what we do? Is that what you do? We all honor God with our lips. We all tow the Christian line. We all say we worship God. But where are our hearts?
This leads into one of the scariest portions of Scripture. It freaks me out. Jesus says at one point "Many will come to me at the last day saying Lord, Lord!,' and I will say Depart from me, I never knew you.'" They will say "Didn't we prophesy in your name and do all kinds of great works in your name?" and Jesus will say "You don't belong to me. Go to hell."
Do you see how dangerous idolatry is? Religion won't cut it. Acknowledging Jesus externally, without being attached to him internally won't cut it.
That's the idol of religion. Just look religious, just look like you have your act together, just do the right things, say the right things, wear the right things, hang out with the right people, and that is worship. That is a lie. It doesn't matter how happy it makes you, how adjusted in life it makes you feel, how many times you say "This is for God," at the end of the day, you are dancing around a gold calf. Something dead. Something YOU made.
This stuff is influencing the Christian Church. It is taught from pulpits, spread through books and blogs, shared and spread by well-intentioned, well-meaning people. And yet if our spirituality is not vitally connected to Jesus Christ as the Lord of all Creation I don't mean it references him or makes allowances for him or uses him as its role model, but actually draws from and is sustained by and proclaims him as the only source of life it is dead spirituality.
Our spirituality is less and less about the cross and more and more about feelings, success, satisfaction, victory, abundance whatever the current buzzword is.
But we cannot have Christian spirituality as a practice without having Christ as a Person.
There is no little-s spirituality worth having if it does not have the big-s Spirit behind it, in it, giving it life, driving it. Spirituality must be granted, driven, and sustained by the Holy Spirit. It must have apprenticeship to Jesus Christ, and the life of the confessional Gospel at its center. Spirituality, in other words, is not an end unto itself.
In his great book The Great Omission, Eugene Peterson writes:
I'm sorry to say this, but too much of what we call Christian is not a manifestation of the supernatural life of God in our souls. Too much of what we call Christian is really just human . . .
. . . [L]ife in Christ, and therefore biblical spirituality, has to do with obedience to Christ . . . [L]ife in Christ is a matter of the "spirit" . . . [S]piritual life is a matter of living our lives from the reality of God . . . Christian spirituality is supernatural because obedience to Christ is supernatural and cannot be accomplished except in the power of a "life from above."
But spirituality in many Christian circles has simply become another dimension of Christian consumerism. We have generated a body of people who consume Christian services and think that is Christian faith. Consumption of Christian services replaces obedience to Christ. And spirituality is one more thing to consume. I go to many, many conferences and talk about these things, and so often I see these people who are just consuming more Christian services.
You can't have a spirituality that is disconnected from Jesus and be a Christian.
There is no real spirituality apart from real trust in the Holy Spirit.
Look at what Joel Osteen says in his bestselling book:
God works where there's faith. And faith to me is having a positive outlook, believing that things are going to get better, and expecting good things in life.
Faith is being positive? Faith is believing things will get better? Faith is expecting the good?
Nothing about Jesus Christ. Nothing about a personal object of faith. The faith here is for stuff, about life, about attitude. God works where we have a positive outlook? How about God has worked, and therefore whatever life brings and Jesus promised trouble, not prosperity we have faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross and out of the tomb? That's faith. Anything else is self-worship. Anything else is just idolatry.
We must be about Jesus. Jesus's life, Jesus' death, Jesus' resurrection. Everything else, however practical, however sensible, however nice, however resonant, however entertaining, however meaningful, however beautiful, is worshiping a dead cow. Any other spirituality, any other religion, even if Christian in name and appearance, is idolatry if it does not hold up Jesus Christ. There is no other name, the Bible says, by which we are saved.
We are taking satisfaction in our works, in our goodness, in our spirituality, and we reckon that as being close to God. But any time we establish what we're doing or have done as the barometer of our faith, we are trusting our works. It doesn't matter if you're cooler than your average legalist. If you listen to U2 instead of the Gaithers. If you wear jeans to church instead of a suit. If you read the right books and hang out in coffee shops talking about social justice. If that is your spiritual satisfaction, it's garbage.
Here's the difference between spirituality and the Gospel:
Spirituality says this makes me feel better; the Gospel says this makes me healed and whole.
Spirituality says I can do it!; the Gospel says Jesus has done it.
Spirituality says we can make our own life; the Gospels says there is no life apart from Jesus.
Spirituality says we have inherent potential to change the world; the Gospel says we are dead in sin and only Jesus Christ can redeem the world.
Spirituality says I am good; the Gospel says Jesus is good.
Spirituality relies on us and worships our efforts; the Gospel relies on Jesus and trusts in him.
Make the radical commitment, abandoning the idols of your culture and age, abandoning the idols of religion and cultural spirituality, to cling to Jesus.
That is real worship. That is Holy Spirit spirituality. Relentlessly eradicate self-trust and self-satisfaction the Bible calls this crucifying your flesh, dying to yourself and throw yourself at the mercy of Jesus. There is grace in him for the broken and weary. There is life in the worship of Him. There is no life in the worship of anything or anyone else.
Jared Wilson is the pastor and co-founder of Element, a missional Christian community in
Nashville, Tennessee, and an award-winning writer whose articles, essays, and
short stories have appeared in numerous publications.
Jared's first book, The Unvarnished Jesus, releases Fall 2009 from Kregel.
A graduate of Middle Tennessee State University, he lives outside
Nashville with his wife and two daughters.
Encounter Jared's passion for the ongoing reformation of the evangelical church
almost daily at www.gospeldrivenchurch.com.
God didn't have sex with my mother. Nor is my mother god. We worship because we are afraid to put all of their faith in themselves, so they pray to false idols in hopes of guidance that never comes. If god made us to worship him, there would be one religion, assuming god made us at all. Which he did not.
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