Saturday, September 5, 2009

Religion Can Be Bad for You

Bad for you? How so? In Daniel 1:2, Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar carried sacred items from God’s temple in Jerusalem to his own temple – not to honor God, but to prove that his gods were superior to God, and to reduce God to being just one of many.

It was a symbol of putting God in submission to his gods – a complete victory and overthrow of God. Imagine God allowing that! But He had prophesied all this in Isaiah 39:6-7 and Jeremiah 27:21-22, who also prophesied the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem and everything Nebuchadnezzar took from it.

Whew! God wasn’t as powerless as He allowed Himself to appear after all. So why can religion be bad for you?

The Babylonians worshipped many gods – enough to cover all the areas of their lives. Not quite New Age as we know it today, but sort of. Today we cover our bases with a little bit of each religion that fits our particular need – including Christianity. (I don’t like that word – it sounds too religious, as opposed to a relationship with Jesus.)

Lots of New Agers call themselves Christians because they think Jesus was wonderful, and they go to church. They might like to add TM (Transcendental Meditation), and perhaps a Buddhist Feng Shui shrine to their home. Add a little bit of evolution, and voilà – gotcha covered.

But there’s one small problem with this: the first commandment, in which God said we shall have no other gods before Him. No “Ohm,” the Hindu god called upon in TM. No Buddha. No godless evolution. God really did design everything. That alone makes Him superior to all other gods.

So are we lining up various sacred items of many gods in our own temples – including God Himself? We can be very spiritual, as the New Agers prefer to call it, or very religious, but all this can be very bad for us, because we are missing the mark. The bullseye is Jesus alone, who was God becoming a man to redeem us, who said, “Nobody comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). If we add other gods to Him, we’re violating His first commandment and reducing Jesus to just one more item to cover our bases.

So what’s your choice? Got a comment?

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