March 10, 2008The reality of God
This will be a simple thought, roughly written, and perhaps worthy of development at some point.In many times and many cultures, the worship and worshipers of Yahweh have been rivaled by the worship of various other deities, and the worshipers of these other gods have not been hesitant to claim that their gods exist and are superior to the God of Israel, or the God of the Church.
In my time and place, however, I rarely interact with those who advocate other gods by name, and I would suggest that the same is true for many reading this. Quite rightly, I think, we tend to claim that the defining principles of the unbeliever's lives, things like money or comfort or fame, are actually their gods. Again, I think that we're right to identify these as idols; the worship of Baal for the sake of prosperous crops and animals and family is, at least in some sense, practically equivalent to the worship of the Dollar.
The unbelievers' gods have been stripped of their attributed personalities, and have been reduced to abstractions.
But I think this transition for the unbeliever has, perhaps, contributed to a similar, devastating transition for the believers. For many Christians, God is an abstraction, merely a name given to label a set of attributes. Yahweh God is stripped of real, personal existence, and reduced to a concept.
A god who is nothing more than an abstract concept will not inspire reverence and worship.
God is, and he acts for his own glory and for the good of his people.