Who Is Your God?

Every person serves someone or something. The Bible calls it worship. Modern society calls it values or priorities, but the principle is the same. Whatever holds the highest authority in your life is your god. It is the voice you obey when its commands conflict with everything else.

Most Christians would immediately deny that they worship idols. They have never bowed before a carved image or offered sacrifices to a pagan god. But idolatry in Scripture was never limited to statues. Israel repeatedly claimed to worship the Lord while placing other authorities above him at the same time. They blended God's commands with the beliefs and practices of the nations around them until there was little difference between the two. God condemned them, not because they stopped talking about him, but because they stopped obeying him.

The same danger faces the church today. Nearly every Christian claims that the Bible is the inspired word of God, but that claim means very little if his word gets ignored whenever it becomes uncomfortable. The real test of who our god is comes when Scripture contradicts our traditions, our emotions, our families, or our churches. At that moment we find out whether Christ is truly Lord or whether someone else holds that position.

This becomes especially clear when the subject is marriage, divorce, and remarriage. Jesus said, "And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery" (Mark 10:12). Paul wrote, "If she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband" (1 Corinthians 7:10-11). Those are not hard passages to read. They are hard to accept because they conflict with modern culture.

Rather than submitting to those words, many people start looking for another authority. Some appeal to their pastor. Others appeal to their denomination. Still others appeal to personal experience or to what feels compassionate. Before long, the discussion is no longer about what Jesus said. It becomes an attempt to explain why his words should not be taken at face value.

That is how idolatry works. It rarely requires rejecting God outright. Sometimes it only requires placing another authority above him. When a pastor's opinion carries more weight than the words of Christ, that pastor has become an authority higher than Christ. When cultural values decide how we interpret Scripture instead of letting Scripture judge the culture, the culture has become our authority. When personal feelings decide which commands we will obey, self has become our god.

Jesus addressed this directly throughout his ministry. He repeatedly confronted religious leaders who honored God with their lips while setting aside his commands to keep their own traditions. Their problem was not ignorance of Scripture. Their problem was that tradition had become more authoritative than the word of God. The same temptation exists today. Christians often inherit theological systems from their churches and defend those systems without ever asking whether they actually match what the Bible says.

This is why the Bereans are described as more noble than others in Acts 17:11. They did not reject Paul's teaching, but they did not accept it just because he was an apostle either. They searched the Scriptures daily to see whether his teaching was true. Their loyalty belonged to God's word, not to the reputation of the teacher.

Every believer carries the same responsibility. We have to be willing to test every doctrine, every sermon, every book, and every tradition against Scripture. If our beliefs cannot survive that test, then it is our beliefs that must change, not the Bible.

This website challenges a number of teachings that have become widely accepted in Christianity today. That does not automatically make those teachings wrong, and it does not automatically make my conclusions right either. The question has never been what I believe or what someone else believes. The only question that ultimately matters is, what has God said?

If you discover that your pastor disagrees with Scripture, whom will you follow? If your denomination teaches something different from the plain words of Christ, whom will you obey? If your family pressures you to set aside God's commands to keep the peace, whose approval matters most?

Those are not just theological questions. They reveal who actually sits on the throne of your life.

One day every one of us will stand before Jesus Christ. On that day we will not answer for the traditions of our denomination, the opinions of our pastor, or the values of our culture. We will answer for what we did with the word of God. That reality should drive every believer back to Scripture with humility, honesty, and a willingness to let go of any belief that the text does not support.

The purpose of this website is not to ask you to believe me. It is to encourage you to believe God. Open your Bible. Read the passages in their context. Examine the evidence carefully. If my conclusions are wrong, reject them. If they hold up under Scripture, then have the courage to follow God's word regardless of the cost. In the end, that is the only question that decides every doctrinal dispute: who is your god?