The Greatest Commandment and Christian Idolatry

Earlier this week Ed Cyzewski wrote about the question: Why Would God "Command" Us to Love? The Greatest Commandment is to "love God and love others," so why this command? Ed "read God’s command to love as counteracting these influences. The
most important part about worshiping God is learning to love God, not
what we bring to the table."

Even in Christianity we bring things to the table. Instead of worshiping God on his terms we often decide to worship God on the world’s terms, and form a syncretism instead of worship after God’s own heart.

Earlier this week as I was reading the lectionary this passage from Deuteronomy 12 jumpted out at me:

You must demolish completely all the places where the nations whom
you are about to dispossess served their gods, on the mountain heights,
on the hills, and under every leafy tree. Break down their altars,
smash their pillars, burn their sacred poles with fire, and hew down
the idols of their gods, and thus blot out their name from their
places. You shall not worship the LORD your God in such ways.

We are commanded to love God and love others because not only do we slip into idolatry and
chasing after false gods, but we also can stumble into worshiping God
“in such ways” as our culture, creating a syncretism of our worship
with how the world worships.

In today’s evangelical landscape there are
so many instances of this in the way we worship and celebrate God:
through rock concerts, conferences, building gigantic sanctuaries,
erecting church campuses, huge church staffs, etc.

Most egregiously, we have concocted the shrewd and calculated idea to
hire huge church staffs so that they can be our “love liaisons” for us,
getting the congregation off the hook from worshiping God the way he
wants to be worshiped so that we can worship him on our own terms.

God commands us to love him and love others because that is not how the world works.  It is certainly not how our culture of consumerism, expoloitation, and greed works.  Love is only the way God works.—
Ed Cyzewski is the author of Coffeehouse Theology.  My review of his book can be found here.  He blogs at In A Mirror Dimly.