Worth-ship: The Idol Test

The police interrupted my idol worship one night in February 2013. I was face down, prostrate in a pool of my own blood, showing value to the god of my life. How dare they?

I gave my life to Jesus in 1982. From then on, I called myself a “Christian.” Jesus was my God, my Higher Power. I may have called myself a Christian, but I resisted being His disciple.

In the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, recovering alcoholics are encouraged to find a “God of your own understanding.” This leads people to believe that there are MANY gods to choose from, MANY “higher powers.” While so much of the text of the book “Alcoholics Anonymous” is based on biblical scripture (without actual reference to it in most cases), the concept of God has been diluted with this notion that there are many “higher powers.” Paul confirms that men will consider other gods than the one true creator, our Father in heaven, when he says…

“For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live,” (1 Cor. 8:5-6, NIV).

This tendency of man contradicts the real heart of God, the Father and his Son, which is for man to worship Him exclusively…

“You shall have no other Gods before me” (Exodus 20:3 NIV)

and…

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the Father but by me.” (John 14:6 NIV)

God is very clear in scripture that he is the one, true God and that we are to worship him and him alone.

But then again, the statement that God makes in the 10 commandments, “You shall have no other Gods before me” seems to assume that there are, in fact, other gods…right?

Indeed, there are.

While I thought I was calling Jesus my Lord and I was committed to worshiping him alone, the TRUTH was that I had MANY other gods in my life that I worshiped, many other higher powers. I had a veritable menu of gods that I would choose from at any given time.

When I began to realize this, I was compelled to look up the word “worship.” What does it REALLY mean? I thought worship was what we did when we sang songs to God in church or when we kneel down in prayer, right? What I found is that the word “worship” was actually derived from an old English word “worth-ship” or in its original form “worthscipe” which means “to ascribe value or worth to something”…

Origin:
…before 900;  (noun) Middle English wors ( c ) hipe, worthssipe, Old English worthscipe, variant of weorthscipe;  see worth-ship; (v.) Middle English, derivative of the noun Worship is an act of religious devotion usually directed towards a deity. The word is derived from the Old English worthscipe, meaning worthiness or worth-ship—to give, at its simplest, worth to something.

Evelyn Underhill (1946) defines worship thus: “The absolute acknowledgment of all that lies beyond us—the glory that fills heaven and earth. It is the response that conscious beings make to their Creator, to the Eternal Reality from which they came forth; to God, however they may think of Him or recognize Him, and whether He be realized through religion, through nature, through history, through science, art, or human life and character.” Worship asserts the reality of its object and defines its meaning by reference to it. – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worship – Wikipedia

Let me repeat that: Worship asserts the reality of its object and defines its meaning by reference to it. If I am “worshiping” God, who is spirit, then my act of worship is definitely a “spiritual” act. Jesus told the woman at the well, “a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” – (John 4:23-24. NIV) Jesus is THE authority on worship, so his thoughts are definitive. Worship is definitely a spiritual principle.

Let’s take it a step further now. When I am feeling anger, fear, worry, doubt, anxiety, shame, guilt, or any other kind of emotional pain, is it not fair to say that I am disturbed in my “spirit”? These emotional feelings have a spiritual impact. Conversely, if I am full of joy, love, peace, happiness, contentment, serenity, gratitude…is it just as fair to say that my “spirit” is at peace? As a matter of fact, the bible calls these kinds of positive spiritual emotions the “fruit of the spirit” (Gal. 5:22 NIV), meaning God’s Holy Spirit. So when I feel these things, positive or negative, my human and natural response is to turn to my “god” with it, either in pleading prayer to relieve the painful, negative feeling or in thanksgiving and praise for the celebration of peace and joy as I assert the reality of this god in my life. That is how I have a relationship with God, my Higher Power. When I do this, I “assert the reality of its object and define its meaning by reference to it.” In other words, I WORSHIP.

My problem is that, for most of my life, instead of turning to Jesus with those feelings, I turned to MANY other “gods”. When I felt angry, fearful, worried, doubtful, anxious, ashamed, guilty…many times, even MOST times, I would turn to other “higher powers”; things like alcohol, pornography, sex, drugs, food, entertainment…even GOOD things like exercise or a hobby…in order to “numb” these negative feelings and emotions. In times of celebration, I might often do the exact same thing to “heighten” the feelings of joy and thankfulness by celebrating with alcohol or some of those other things as well. When I turn to these things to relieve pain or heighten joyful celebration, am I NOT looking to them, allowing them to have power and influence over me? Am I NOT “asserting the reality of its object and defining its meaning by reference to it?” Am I not, at its simplest, giving WORTH to these things, ascribing VALUE? This is delusional thinking; the idol factory working overtime.

“a deluded heart misleads him; he cannot save himself, or say, “Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?” (Isaiah 44:20 NIV)

If I AM in fact doing what I just described, I am WORSHIPING alcohol, pornography, sex, drugs, food, entertainment, music, fishing, exercise…etc. The altar of alcohol is the Bar. The altar of pornography, the keyboard.  Drugs, the pharmacy counter.  Sex, the bed.  Food, the refrigerator.  I had become a virtual IDOL FACTORY, bowing down in worship to all of these other, lesser “gods”, allowing them to have power over me. My experience is that this is how most people create idols and take God, the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ OUT of their rightful order and authority in our lives. We ascribe a higher value to these other things than we do to God. THIS is the essence of idolatry.