GOD and the "gods"

So God’s name isn’t God.

God’s name is Yahweh.

But why does God need a name in the first place?

Short answer—and hang on, this might hit you like a freight train: because there are many “gods.”

In Hebrew, the word God is elohim. It’s not a name; it’s a category. It’s used for the Creator of the universe, but it’s also used for all sorts of other spiritual beings.

In the second book of the Bible, Exodus, we read about Yahweh saving Israel out of slavery in Egypt. There’s a line in Exodus 12 where Yahweh says, “I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt.”

And in Daniel, there’s a crazy story about Daniel’s prayers going unanswered for three weeks. Finally an angel comes to him from Yahweh and says he was late because “the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days.” The “prince” here is some kind of spiritual being at the back of the Persian Empire. Then as he’s leaving, the angel says there’s a “prince of Greece” he has to fight as well.

The Scripture writers are all making the same basic point: there is one true Creator God with no equal, and no parallel. But there is also a multiplicity of other wannabe “gods,” invisible-but-real spiritual beings. And these other elohim have a certain amount of power.

But over and over again, Yahweh warns his people: don’t ever worship them.

There are commands all over the Scriptures to stay as far away as possible from idolatry. And if you’ve been around the church for a while, the odds are you’ve sat through a sermon or two about idolatry, and the pastor said something to the effect of “an idol is anything that takes the place of God in your heart.”

Now, I absolutely agree that we need to watch our hearts.

I just don’t think that’s what the writers of the Bible mean by idolatry.

Paul writes this to the followers of Jesus in first-century Corinth: “Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.”

Notice that for Paul, the danger of idolatry isn’t that your priorities are out of whack; it’s that you end up in relationship with a demon.

In a secular society, the “gods” become nonspiritual—money, sex, power, more followers on Twitter, flatter abs, anything that “takes the place of God in your heart.”

But here’s what we need to remember: behind these nonspiritual, secular non-gods, there is often lurking a real spiritual being. Like with an idol, behind that hunk of wood or rock or metal is often a creature with a scary amount of power.

In his commencement address at Kenyon College, the novelist and social critic David Foster Wallace eloquently said, “In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”

He went on to warn that if you worship the wrong thing, it “will eat you alive.”

Only the one true Creator God is deserving of worship. He is the only source of life and peace and meaning and significance that will last past death and into forever.

Love him with all your heart and soul and strength, with every scrap of your being. Not Aphrodite or the new Audi or V-cut abs or a 4.0 or whatever “it” is for you.

Worship God.