Creations

"Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.” Romans 1:22-23

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them and serve them…” Exodus 20:4-5a

In some sense, Christians should be unhappy people. As much as is beautiful in the world and as much hope as we have in our God and his plan for his creation, the fact remains that our world is a seriously messed up place. And what makes it even worse for us is that we’re as much to blame for messing it up as anyone. That’s not my cynical nature talking, that’s just what’s written in the Bible.

If frustration and unhappiness come due to things not going the way we’d wished and hoped, then Christians of all people have much reason to be frustrated. As followers of Christ, we are to share in his vision for the world. As children of God, we are to long for the healing of the world he created. So long as there exist things like war, the deaths of innocents, and injustice, we of all people should not feel completely comfortable.

As Paul lays the foundation for the larger argument of his message to the Romans, he begins by appealing to the first and second of the Ten Commandments: the commands to worship and follow only one God, the God of Abraham, Jacob, and Isaac. Undoubtedly reflecting some of his extensive and rigorous training as a Pharisee, Paul links the world’s ailments (especially focusing on the out-of-control lifestyles of the Roman nobility) to the breaking of these two commandments. In other words, everything about the world that could be seen as broken could also be linked back to one fundamental problem: following and worshipping anybody or anything besides God.

One of the questions that I ask myself that help me to grow the most is “Who are you worshipping?” Even though I’m a pastor, and even though my job is to lead weekly services that exist solely to allow God’s people to worship him together, I struggle to worship him with my whole life. Although it would probably impossible to tell from the outside, I know that, on the inside, my motivations are often have much more to do with worshipping and serving myself than him.

Who are you worshipping?

One thing that’s difficult about that question is that sometimes we’re not even sure what it really means to worship something or someone. The fact is you don’t have to be singing to someone to be worshipping them. An easy way to tell what or who it is you worship is to look at what takes up most of your time and mental energy. Here are a few questions that get at the heart of that: How much time do you spend worrying about what you will wear or eat? How much do you worry about your retirement portfolio or your checking account? How obsessed are you with your body image? The list could go on and on, but I hope you get the idea.

We might not be struggling with the same things the Romans were, but our fundamental problem is the same: God is not who we worship, and the things we put in his place really don’t care if the world we live in crashes and burns. In fact, there’s probably nothing better they’d like to see.