A Thought For The Week Of December 29

"For all the gods of the nations are idols,  but the Lord made the heavens." (Psalm 96:5) The words "all the gods of the nations" strike home with me today. How easy it is for us to set up our own gods; to choose to devote our lives to something and to make that "something" the only thing that matters to us. There are, of course, all sorts of gods all around us. The phrase "the gods of the nations" is interesting. I'm taking this a wee bit out of context (it means the gods of all the different peoples) but there's still a connection here that works. One of the primary "gods of the nations" is the nation itself. Nation-states set themselves up as almost god-like entities. They demand absolute loyalty from their citizens, and they threaten punishment (or at least consequences) to those who don't offer absolute loyalty. And isn't that essentially what a "god" does? And I wonder how much of our faith as Christians has been impacted by this vision of what nations and gods do? We claim to believe in a God of love and grace, and yet too often we ourselves almost equate God with the nation, and we attribute to God the same qualities possessed by the nation - the demand for absolute loyalty and the threat of punishment or consequences for disloyalty. But is that really God? The God revealed by Jesus? To me, it's a warped image of God - warped by the entanglement of the church with the state and put in place by those (in both the nation and the church) who want to demand absolute loyalty from their people. Maybe that's why the Psalm tells us to "say among the nations, 'The Lord reigns.'" We're to constantly call people away from idolatry - away from the attempts of nation, church or anything else to draw us away from God. God - revealed by Jesus - is a God of love, grace, mercy and forgiveness. That God has the only real claim on our allegiance, our loyalty or our faith. As a new year beckons us to adventures unknown, my prayer is that we will give our allegiance to God, and leave all our other gods behind us.