18 Jun Worshipping the Universe?
People need something bigger than themselves to believe in.
Historically in ancient times people believed that the sun, the moon, the stars and even nature around them were deities. Creation is big and grand and it seemed logical to people to worship it and trust it. When Genesis was written, the Lord very specifically said he created the ‘greater light’ which we knew was the sun. He was careful not to use the word for the sun in that day, which was the name of a god. God didn’t want anyone to think that the sun was in fact a god, and He definitely didn’t want anyone to think the gods were created by God.
Later in Bible times the people of Israel struggled and kept turning back to Baal and Asherah – fertility gods which had a lot to do with nature, and harvest and the cycles of seasons.
You would think that with the coming of Christ and the advance of the gospel that such a phenomena is long gone, but not completely. In some parts of the world it has never been eradicated. And surprisingly in the modern west where people have discarded biblical values, there is a return to the worship of creation. This is clearly seen in two ways.
First people in general worship the environment by placing huge importance on it and focussing their energy on caring for the planet. This was always something the Lord wanted people to do, among his first instructions to Adam and Eve in Eden. However the care for the planet was something done in obedience to Christ, but society today has taken on planet care to an extreme where it has become almost worshipful. For some people, it provides such meaning it has become the entire purpose of their lives.
But there is another way in which nature worship is growing, and it appears in this sense that people pray and talk to “the universe” as though it is conscious. On a recent episode of Alone, a survival show, a woman who caught a fish thanked “the universe” for giving her the fish. It has become more and more common to see the universe as being somehow influential in the affairs of the lives of people. It’s a form of worship.
There is nobody and no thing bigger than Christ. He alone is worthy of worship.
If around you there are people who are turning to creation worship, it is because they have either forgotten, or cannot see the creator. It is time to pray for them, and for society with renewed passion that will bring the creator back into focus. The time is now to go to our knees. It is time for the good old-fashioned gospel to once again do its work of power in changing lives.