Thursday, November 17, 2005

Alphabet Religious Soup - part 3

In brief compass we've considered the history of the world in its religious aspect. My point has simply been this: although God made man to worship Him, man from the garden onwards has rebelled against worship of the one true God and in many cultures through time has developed various forms of false worship which are the world's religions. We were last considering the fact that although religions like Mormonism and Buddhism appear rather distinct from the outside, at the core they are actually rather related.

In Romans 1:25 we find the most important text that will help us look into our alphabet religious soup and see that in actuality all we have are an A and multiple F's religiously speaking. That is we have a successful religion and failing religions. Successful religion revolves around worship of the one true God - the Creator - who made everything. The multiple F's are the various forms of worship which aren't centered on Yahweh the Creator of the world. The world's religions exhibit the behavior described in Romans 1:25. Adherents of the world's religions exchange the truth about who made them and thus deserves their worship for the lie (NKJV gets it right on this translation). God clearly wants you to see through the hand of the apostle Paul that there is one truth and one lie. You might protest at this point that I'm not taking seriously the differences between something as "unsophisticated" as animism and as "sophisticated" as secular atheism.

I won't dispute that the lie exists in different forms. The next passage we'll consider indicates that Paul experienced that in Athens. I'm not disputing the valid differences between the world's religions. But at their core there is something that unifies them. Their unity lies in this: they refuse to worship God the Creator alone. Instead, they worship something or someone created. This is true whether one is Marxist (economic equality is worshipped), Mormon (self-elevation to godhood is worshipped), Buddhist (enlightenment is worshipped), or secular (human self-progress is worshipped). This is what unifies the world's religions and provides the impetus towards harmonizing religions. Instinctively people realize that a mutual avoidance of Yahweh is a unifying factor that supersedes real but essentially superficial(!) differences.

How do we react to the fact that as we look closely into our alphabet soup there are multiple F's and one A? We would do well to follow the Apostle Paul in Acts 17:16ff as he ministers in Athens. Paul recognizes that despite the diversity of false gods they still had some doubt and even worshipped an unknown god just to cover their bases. Paul picks up on this opportunity and preaches to them not about another god they could add to their pantheon but instead about the Creator. This Creator needs nothing from man and instead is the one who made man and even is the one directing history and sustaining each person's being. Because God is a spirit he can't be captured in a statue. Those who have worshipped the creature in the past must repent from worship of something created and instead worship the One who made them. In this brief sermon Paul makes the case for what I've been arguing in the last 3 posts.

Despite their diversity, the world's religions are similar in that they refuse the true God, make of heaven and earth. For those following the current debates about the inclusion of teaching about intelligent design theory in high school biology classes this is simply the latest skirmish in the war. What lies behind that debate is what we've been discussing. Will we acknowledge the Creator or do something, anything, else? Is there a Creator or isn't there? Evolution has been a convenient excuse to exclude the possibility of a Creator from public discource and teaching in the schools. Any thought that there might be a no-name creator (all that Intelligent Design posits) must be resisted absolutely because if someone or something made us, then that something or someone might place obligiations on us. Since people want to avoid the obligations (worship and service) they avoid even the possibility that they are made.

So if we sum up a bit of what we've been considering over these last 3 posts we see that God began the war in Genesis 3 and expanded the war onto multiple fronts in Genesis 11. As the war raged on these multiple fronts it appeared Satan was winning the war as various world religions developed and expanded their influence. Certainly by the time Christ came, the Jewish people were a huge minority in the ancient world with millions of people worshipping around the world in a zillion forms with very few worshipping the one true God. But though the war looked for a while like it was going badly for God, it was a facade. God is zealous for His own worship knowing that man will only be truly satisfied when he worships the One who made him.

In compassion towards confused idolaters God steps in decisively in Jesus Christ and the world hasn't been the same since. In the teaching and preaching of Paul we see the war clarified. We see that this isn't a competition between multiple equally promising proposals for satisfying man's religious impulse. Instead it is a simple war with only two sides in reality. Some are on the side of the worship of the Creator of all things the rest are on the side of worshipping anything but Yahweh. In our next and last post we'll consider the crucial nature of seeing this war rightly and what hope there is for the end of the war.

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