No Pagan Ways – The Kingdom Curriculum VI (2)

No Pagan Ways

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image…” Exodus 20:4; Deuteronomy 5:8

“When My angel goes before you and brings to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do…” Exodus 23:23, 24

No pagan practices, either!

Religion is not just a collection of spiritual exercises–worship, prayer, Bible reading, or any of the rituals and disciplines recommended by the religions of the world. Religions–the things we believe and to which we are devoted–affect the way we live. What we hold as of ultimate importance will exercise a formative influence in our everyday lives–all our roles, relationships, and responsibilities.

The worship which Canaanite peoples gave to their deities led to some pretty disgusting practices, including widespread sexual libertinism and burning children in fire. They also encouraged a good deal of violence and plundering against one’s neighbors. So not only was Israel to stay away from their spiritual exercises, they were not to emulate their everyday practices, either.

The same admonition falls to us, even in this secular and materialist society. For example, if we “worship” something like wealth or success, we will find that an inordinate amount of our time and strength are expended in the service of these “deities.” These false gods will garner the best part of our thinking and our strongest affections, as well as most of our time and energy. We will give the best of our daily practices to serving the purposes these deities dictate, and we won’t have much time or strength to invest in the work of God’s Kingdom. God, because He comes third or fourth on the list of things we worship, will get third or fourth best of everything.

If we are not careful about where we devote our most intense affections and our greatest strength, we may end up serving the wrong god–even as we profess to believe in the one true God. And we also may find our lives filled with practices that look more like those of our pagan neighbors than of someone who’s following Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

What you worship determines what you do with your time, strength, and resources. Israel was warned not to worship pagan deities or to live like those who did. The same warning applies to us.

The way to begin to love God’s Law is to spend time reading and meditating on it. Order your copy of The Law of God today by going to www.MyParuchia.com, clicking on Publications, then clicking Waxed Tablet.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.