30th June 2025

Idolatry

“You shall have no other gods before Me”  

Exodus 20:3

Today's Bible Reading: Psalm 115:1-8.

Mankind is innately religious. He must have a god—any god—and he crafts them with his own hands and heart. As someone once said, “The power of a nation or a civilization will be weighed not in missiles or divisions, but in faith—whether false or true.” When a nation abandons the true and living God of its Christian heritage, it does not become godless; it simply bows to new idols.

We like to imagine idolatry as relics of the Dark Ages or exotic lands far from Europe, but idolatry in the West thrives—cleverly disguised in our “isms”: humanism, materialism, spiritualism, egoism. These are the sleek, seductive gods of the modern world—polished, praised, and paraded as enlightened ideals. Western culture is no longer Christian—it is a cocktail of paganism and Scripture, a spiritual alloy of contradiction.

We talk of God, but live as though He has no claim on us. We develop a kind of split soul. Our lips say “In God we trust,” but our lives scream “Me first.” We have moulded new idols—idols of success, pleasure, self—and bowed before them. Ours is a modern polytheism: trying to serve both the living God and the lifeless gods we’ve fashioned. But anything that takes His place is sin. And where truth and error mix, compromise is born. Remember the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3).

Prayer: Father, help me each day to give You, Your rightful place in my life each day. In Christ's name, I pray. Amen.