Article August 13, 2018 Issue

Accept no substitutes for God

Mark Swinney

In various eras, ours included, there’s sometimes been a tendency for people to get distracted by and preoccupied with substitute gods.

In biblical times, people idolized statues, animals, and the stars, among other things. Today, the idols we may attempt to substitute for God appear in other forms—a preoccupation with physicality, celebrity worship, either gluttony or an obsession with a certain diet, and pride of power, to name a few.

Early on in the Bible, there is a verse that opens the way toward giving up a fixation on false gods: “The Lord is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting king” (Jeremiah 10:10). This true and genuine God is not a material being, or a physical thing at all, but is ever-present Love and Spirit. Christ Jesus brought this out for his followers, saying, “For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24, New Living Translation).

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