More from Jeremiah

There is a book that talks about the Idols of our Time. It talks about such things as nationalism, trust in weapons and so on. Jeremiah in his eleventh chapter states, 13 For your gods have become as many as your cities, O Judah, and as many as the streets of Jerusalem are the altars you have set up to shame, altars to make offerings to Baal. Your gods have become as many as your cities. I haven't done research into this one, but my best guess is that Jeremiah is referring to the fact that each city had its own patron deity for protection. It was a fairly regular thing in the Ancient Near East for cities to have their own central god.

It leaves me wondering about the gods that we have, have they become as many as our cities? Certainly we have the overall god of our culture, the god of consumerism. It is a god that right now is dying in the midst of this huge economic downturn, and as our god dies we are terrified. But beyond the big god, what local deities do we have that we worship? John Calvin talks about an idol being anything we trust in alongside of or in the place of God. It's always hard to figure out just what those idols might be. When does something good that we enjoy become an idol? When do sports move from the category of something we enjoy to something that we trust in? Does it have anything to do with time and investment? When we invest more time in such things than we invest in God, have they become idols? Or does it have to do with intent? When we do these things for our glory, for our kids glory rather than for the glory of God, do they become idols? Or one more. When these things take us away from the community of faith where we have promised to care for and be cared for, grow others and be grown by them, does that make them idols? Or when does something important become something we trust in? Like, when does our concern for keeping our children safe make an idol of either our children or of safety?

I'm guessing that most of us, myself included, don't think too deeply about the idols of our times. We are more likely to justify our idols than confront them. We are more likely to rationalize our idols that seeing how they control us. But could it be that Jeremiah's words ring as true today as they did 2600 years ago, "For your gods have become as many as your cities...."