{"id":3819,"date":"2014-04-13T21:46:01","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T01:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allandouglas.com\/blog\/?p=3819"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:39","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:39","slug":"a-religion-of-convenience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/a-religion-of-convenience\/","title":{"rendered":"A Religion of Convenience: This God or That One"},"content":{"rendered":"

In our Sunday School class we’re studying the Old Testament books of Joshua, Judges and Ruth.\u00a0 These books occur just after the Israelites have occupied Canaan; The Promised Land, and after Joshua, the last of the patriarchal leaders has died.\u00a0 Without a patriarch to hold them to their religion, the people fall away from God, following the pagan practices of the Canaanites who were not driven out of the land as God had instructed the Israelites.<\/p>\n

\"Baal<\/a>
A temple to Baal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A cycle is set up where the people fall away and begin worshiping Baal, his sister Anoth and Baal’s wife: Asherah (who was known to the Greeks as Aphrodite, and to the Romans as Venus, figures who appear in society even today).\u00a0 God becomes angry with Israel and delivers them into the hands of an enemy for a period of time.\u00a0 Israel cries out to God for forgiveness, God provides a deliverer who leads them in a miraculous victory over their enemy and guides the nation for a time.\u00a0 But upon that leaders’ death, Israel slides back into pagan religion and the cycle begins again.\u00a0 Over and over and over.<\/p>\n

Why Don’t They Remember?<\/h2>\n

Why, when the nation has been delivered so many times from its enemies, beginning with the exodus from Egypt led by Moses, would the people keep sliding back into paganism?\u00a0 Why is it so hard for them to remember the God who keeps delivering them?<\/p>\n

Perhaps it’s the same reason we are doing it again today. \u00a0<\/p>\n

In Old Testament Israel, after driving out most of Canaan’s former occupants, the Israelites set up the Tent of Meeting, or mobile temple that God had designed for them to use in worshiping Him during their desert trek, at Shiloh.\u00a0 This was the center of worship for the entire nation.\u00a0 At each of the seven annual festivals and when a first-born was consecrated, each family had to travel to Shiloh to perform the rituals prescribed by their religion.\u00a0 This was inconvenient.\u00a0 Add to that the fact that God no longer lived over their heads in a cloud of smoke and fire as he had during the desert journey; out of sight, out of mind.<\/p>\n

The Canaanites who had escaped the initial slaughter crept back in to occupy empty territory before the Israelites grew numerous enough to occupy their entire inheritance.\u00a0 Rather than being constantly at war, it was easier to let the pagans live among them.<\/p>\n

Naturally, the Canaanites rebuilt their temples and resumed their worship of Baal and his family.\u00a0 As they increased their numbers, Baal was everywhere.\u00a0 Every family could have its’ own alter.\u00a0 Temples to Baal were numerous.\u00a0 It was so much more convenient to worship a deity who was very visible and easily accessible, even if he was a false god.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0New American\u00a0Idols<\/h2>\n

Today, instead of worshiping Baal, Americans tend to worship themselves.\u00a0 Some devote the majority of their lives to developing a career, getting ahead, so they can bask in the glory of being “somebody” and can afford the big house full of cutting-edge electronics, fancy cars and the best clothes.\u00a0 Others show less ambition, but still devote their lives to fulfilling their own desires with little regard for what is ‘right’.\u00a0 Whether their desires are even legal often doesn’t interest them, much less being Godly.\u00a0 And attending church, studying the bible, communicating with God through prayer, and serving Him in the church and in the community; these have become very inconvenient.<\/p>\n

When these people find that they have no use for The Lord or Jesus, they do not want to be reminded of their back-sliding, so they seek to excise God from modern society; remove Him from our public class rooms, ban the Ten Commandments from government offices, sanitize Christmas displays and celebrations by focusing on the commercial aspect and quashing any mention or depiction of Christ.\u00a0 Remove all the reminders.<\/p>\n

Who Is To Blame?<\/h2>\n

When Muslem terrorists dove three commercial air liners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon people around the nation shook their fist and shouted, “Why would God allow this to happen?”\u00a0 When Hurricane Katrina battered the southern United States, they looked Heavenward and asked “Why?”.\u00a0 The Israelites of The Old Testament also did this when hardship came upon them.\u00a0 Eventually the Israelites went from surprise and anger to begging for mercy and deliverance from the God they had pushed aside.<\/p>\n

The United States of America has been a sovereign nation and a world power for over 200 years.\u00a0 Our Constitution and Bill of Rights were drafted upon Christian principles by Godly men and we have all become comfortable with the notion that we are “safe” here.\u00a0 But for how long?\u00a0 That God-fearing attitude has been changing; losing it’s centrality in our government, in our nation as a whole.\u00a0 Modern pagans have crept into our Promised Land and are erecting their temples, and those temples\u00a0are proving convenient to Christians.<\/p>\n

As our nation turns it’s collective back on God, just as the Israelites turned theirs, we should be prepared to be “given into the hands” of our enemies.\u00a0 Perhaps this would be just another loop in that cycle, forcing Christians to turn back to God.\u00a0 Perhaps not.<\/p>\n

Storm Clouds On the Horizon?<\/h2>\n

2nd Thessalonians, chapter 2 discusses events leading up to the return of Christ after gathering God’s children and taking them home.\u00a0 A man, a human, will rise to power.\u00a0 “He opposes and exalts himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, and even sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.”\u00a0 In those times, it will be very inconvenient indeed to be a true Christian; to stand up and profess faith in Jesus may well prove fatal.\u00a0 But only physically.<\/p>\n

This is the course history will take, must take.\u00a0 Just as Jesus Christ had to be crucified to redeem our sins, Christians are and will be tested by the unrighteous.\u00a0 Will we stand firm for Biblical truth, or will it be more convenient to give in, turn away and worship the idols of our society?<\/p>\n

These events may not happen this year, or next, or in our lifetimes, but we must be prepared, and we must be preparing the next generation, to stand firm and hold onto our faith in God even in the face of adversity.\u00a0 Even though that may be inconvenient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In our Sunday School class we’re studying the Old Testament books of Joshua, Judges and Ruth.  These books occur just after the Israelites have occupied Canaan; The Promised Land, and after Joshua, the last of the patriarchal leaders has died.  Without a patriarch to hold them to their religion, the people fall away from God, … Continue reading “A Religion of Convenience: This God or That One”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[69,57],"class_list":["post-3819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-matters-of-faith","tag-god","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3819"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19483,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3819\/revisions\/19483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}