Polytheistic Christians

One of the greatest realizations that I’ve had so far in my Old Testament overview course is that even at their most idolatrous moments, Israel never actually abandoned the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Their problem was not replacing Yahweh with various Canaanite gods. Their problem was setting other gods beside him. Yahweh remained their national deity, the one on whom they called when it came to war and threats from enemies. For other matters, however, they looked to Baal and Ashtoreth to bless their tribes, households, and crops. Just as you wouldn’t call on a shoemaker to mend your fence, so, too, they thought, you wouldn’t take a request for a good harvest to a god specializing in war.

Looking at things from their perspective, then, it’s not too hard to imagine the Israelites hearing the preaching of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, or Jeremiah and saying, “What are you talking about? We haven’t forsaken the God of Israel! We’re remain faithful to him! Look, we continue to honor him with our sacrifices!”

It’s easy to look down our noses at the Israelites. I’ve asked myself on many occasions how they could have wandered away from the God who had delivered them from Egypt and given them victory in the Promised Land. In actuality, from their perspective the shift from monotheism to polytheism was probably a very easy step to take. It didn’t require them to turn their back on Yahweh. It only required that they section off what must have seemed like insignificant amounts of honor due only to him and lay it at the feet of some of the other idols of the land.

With all that in mind, it has become horrendously obvious to me that polytheism is alive and well among 21st century Christians. Of course, Christians have not rejected the God of the Bible. They haven’t stopped honoring him with their rituals and with their lips. Quite the contrary. Some are fierce when it comes to defending God and supposedly keeping his commandments. However, many Christians, just like the Israelites all throughout their early history, have set up rival gods right alongside Yahweh, the single, sovereign Maker of heaven and earth. Our idols, however, are simply harder to spot. We no longer carve their images out of wood or stone or metal and burn incense to them. But we bow before their altars all the same.

Jeremiah 2:12–13 has been helpful for me to understand the essence of what idolatry is:

For cross to the coasts of Cyprus and see,
or send to Kedar and examine with care;
see if there has been such a thing.
Has a nation changed its gods,
even though they are no gods?
Be appalled, O heavens, at this;
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
declares the Lord,
for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Notice God’s indictment against Israel: Even though other nations have not swapped out their gods for different ones, Israel has (even though, had you asked them, surely they would have claimed that they still worshiped Yahweh). Then God defines precisely the evils that Israel has committed in doing so: “[T]hey have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

The picture is of a great fountain overflowing in front of Israel, and what do they do? They say, “Oh, that’s nice,” and go dig pits in the ground for themselves to catch runoff water from other sources. (See Jeremiah 38:5 where Jeremiah is lowered into a cistern in which there was no water but only mud.) Not only are they seeking to collect water for themselves from other sources, but their efforts are completely in vain because of cracks in the bottom of the pits they’ve dug. In other words, not only is the act insulting to God; it’s also completely hopeless of achieving the end the idolater is seeking.

Idolatry, therefore, is when God—the most satisfying, most life-giving, most hope-filling being in the universe—stands right in front of you, and you say, “Oh, that’s nice. I think I’ll go look for something else to supply my satisfaction, life, and hope. Thanks anyway.”

If that’s at the heart of idolatry, it is not hard to see how we 21st century Christians are just as polytheistic as our ancient Jewish counterparts.

For me, Ezekiel helps bring the point a little closer to home. Notice his words in Ezekiel 7:19–20: “They cast their silver into the streets, and their gold is like an unclean thing. Their silver and gold are not able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord. They cannot satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For it was the stumbling block of their iniquity. His beautiful ornament they used for pride, and they made their abominable images and their detestable things of it. Therefore I make it an unclean thing to them.”

What were the Israelites trusting in to “deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord”? What were they counting on to “satisfy their hunger” and “fill their stomachs”? Answer: their silver and their gold. They took their wealth and—in this case, literally—began to think that it was capable of saving them. Do we do anything different when we trust in our pay checks or bank accounts or retirement funds or increasing house values or stable markets or strong economies? We may not form literal images out of those things, but are we not, just like Israel, counting on those things to deliver us, satisfy us, and fill us instead of God?

We’ve forsaken the fountain of living water and have hewn out cisterns we call wealth. The dirty little secret is that our pits are cracked and everything we think we’re storing up is really seeping out. And despite all the lip service we might pay to the God of the Bible, in the end it’s painfully clear that we’re just as polytheistic as ancient Israel.

Ezekiel asks a really good question upon discerning the state of his people, a question we might ask of ourselves today: “Ah, Lord God! Will you make a full end to the remnant of Israel?” (Ezekiel 11:15).

God answers by giving this astounding promise to the idolaters of Ezekiel’s day: “I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statues and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God” (11:19–20).

God is in the business of renovating the temples of idols into temples fit for his Holy Spirit. In fact, the change is so complete, the New Testament refers to the new building as a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). At his divine decree, dead, lifeless hearts of stone are transformed into living hearts of soft flesh. That is, people who once saw him, the fountain of living water, and who once responded by grabbing a shovel and hewing out a pit for themselves, now drop their shovels and dive headfirst into the life-giving stream that only flows from him.

It should come as no surprise that we today are inclined to exactly the same type of idolatry that Israel was inclined to. We as human beings are idolaters by nature. God, however, gives new hearts with new desires and turns idolaters into monotheistic worshipers of the only true living God, who will satisfy us fully and forever like nothing else can. He promised he’d work that transformation in Israel, and that promise remains true today for us. Such a transformation might be impossible with men, but we can be thankful that “with God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26), like even rich men coming to love Jesus more than their possessions and therefore entering the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:16–25).