The Third Exchange

Early in his letter to the Roman Christians, the Apostle Paul characterizes the wicked and ungodly as those who have made three bad trades.  They have exchanged what is full of the glory of the immortal God for what only is filled with mortality.  They have exchanged the truth about God for a lie.  And the third exchange is set forth with the words, "they worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator..."  (Romans 1:25)  When God thundered forth from Mt. Sinai, "you shall have not other gods before me"  (Exodus 20:3)  no one likely imagined that the god put before Yahweh would be anything except some hand made idol.     

What we have come to realize through the years of our life is the reality of the second god being ourselves.  The temptation of the Hebrews was to worship at two altars.  One altar was dedicated to Yahweh and the other to some idol such as Baal.   Today we worship at the altar of the God of the Scripture and the altar of our own ego.  Or, to put it in Pauline language, we worship the creature.  What the creature wants or seems to need is more important that the expressed will of God.    

Ego worship does not usually become expressed on bent knee at some homemade altar, but in the living we do day to day.  It expresses itself as we settle into a life which is built more on what we want, or think we need than what God might want for us.  We talk about depending on God, but for all practical purposes, we depend first upon ourselves and God is the default mechanism of our life.  Or, it may be that we talk the talk of depending on God, but we have an elaborate security system that will deliver us in case God is not able to handle the things of our life.  Creature worship is a subtle road that we walk without always being aware of where we are walking and where it is taking us.