Becoming Whole - A 7 Day DevotionalSample

 INDIVIDUAL AND CULTURAL CHANGE 

We Become What We Worship

Humans beings are created to be image bearers. To be an image bearer is to act as a mirror, reflecting the image of whatever god we are worshiping onto the rest of creation. There are three important components to this profound truth.

First, every human is worshiping something, whether God, money, sex, power, fame, or something else. The term worship in this context doesn’t mean just singing hymns on Sunday morning. Rather, we worship whatever we love most, the magnet that has the greatest pull on our hearts. The question is not whether we worship but what we worship.

Second, the reason we’re able to act as image bearers of whatever god we’re worshiping is because we’re actually transformed into the image of that god. Whatever has captured our deepest affection, whatever becomes the focus of our attention, whatever consumes our energies and our passions is what we become like. Thus, when other people or the rest of creation encounters us, they encounter  a reflection of whatever god we are worshiping, for we actually bear the likeness of that god.

This reality sheds a different light on the first of the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3). As our Creator, God has the right to demand that we worship Him above all else. But it’s also true that God loves us and wants what is best for us. He knows He made us to bear the image of whatever we are worshiping. So, He wants us to bear the image of the most wonderful thing in the whole cosmos: Himself! The first commandment, like all the commandments, therefore, is an expression of God’s love for us. God is not demanding that we worship Him because He is insecure. Rather, He is calling us to worship Him because He knows that when we do so, we experience liberty, joy, dignity, love, and life. God wants us to fully flourish as human beings, and the first step to such flourishing is to worship Him.

Psalm 115 shows us what happens when we choose to worship something else.

Those who worship idols take on the characteristics of those idols! Similarly, those who worship God become more and more like Him: “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).

Third, humans create culture in their own image. If you have kids, they undoubtedly reflect your qualities, both good and bad, because they’ve been deeply influenced by growing up in your household. Similarly, if you’re a coach, a carpenter, or an artist, you’ve played a huge role in shaping your players, woodwork, or paintings. They reflect your qualities, for you “made” them.

We worship what we love, and because our loves reflect our minds, affections, and wills, they shape our entire lives. If, then, human beings are transformed into the image of whatever god(s) they are worshiping and then create culture into that same image, to analyze where people and culture are heading in any particular setting, we must first ask what god(s) they are worshiping. Idols are incredibly powerful. Although they cannot speak, see, hear, smell, feel, or walk, they have a powerful impact on the world, for they transform those who worship them into their likeness, ultimately shaping the world in which those worshipers live.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. Do you believe that every human being is worshiping something?  What does it mean that “we worship what we love most”?
2. What does it mean to be transformed into the image of what we worship? Have you seen that transformation in others?  Yourself?
3. Humans create culture in their own image.  In your culture, what “gods” shape the world you live in?  What impact does it have on the world around you?