In ancient Rome Marcus Agrippa commissioned a temple to be built that was to be dedicated to all the gods. The word “Pantheon” itself is actually a Greek word that literally means “to all gods.” Today you can visit the Pantheon in Rome which is still standing in the middle of the city. It sounds great doesn’t it? I mean what a diplomatic and ultimately fair way to approach faith! The problem of course, is that Jesus doesn’t leave us that option. He asks for our entire heart to be given to Him in devotion and love.

Every since I first heard about the Pantheon I have recognized a painful and awkward parallel with my own life. While I don’t keep statues of other gods around and give no allegiance to any other god of history, I DO have many non-physical idols in my life. I have different “passions” or “hobbies” that at times clearly rise to the level of idolatry in my life. I don’t want that to be true, but must confess that it certainly is.

Pantheon

I recognize that for modern man, a new form of Pantheon has emerged that is really not as different from the original as I would like to believe. While an ancient Roman or Greek may have had dozens of gods that they prayed to for protection, good crops, rain, health etc I have my own areas of devotion that can rise to the level of worship in my life. Longhorn football is just one such example, yet it is no less wrong than worshiping Zeus if I make it a primary source of Joy or discouragement (depending on how they do “this year.”)

Moving to Africa provided us with a wonderful opportunity to test our devotion to our things. I was surprised how easy it was, once we had decided to move to Africa, to get rid of most of our things. At times, certain items were more difficult to let go of, but at the end of the day we got rid of about 95% of our things and felt freer for having done so!

I really don’t mean to suggest for a second that God is opposed to passions or hobbies. Clearly He gives us those very things as a blessing! But I do want to always be sure I am putting Him ahead of any of those. Do you have any areas of your life that have risen to the level of idolatry?

Food? Exercise? Sports? Movies? Politics? News? Work? Kids? Boyfriend? Girlfriend? Spouse? Facebook? Blog? ; ) …you get the idea!

God isn’t against idolatry just because it is arbitrarily “sin”…it is because God is a relational God and He wants to have relationship with you. He went to extravagant lengths to establish relationship with us through great personal sacrifice.

If we are filling up all of our time with pursuits that distract us from eternal things, we miss out on building relationship with God as our loving Father. It would be akin to being married but never talking to our spouse because of some hobby that stole all of our time (this unfortunately can apply too but that would be for another blog on another day!).

Love you guys…thanks for reading and feel free to comment!

– Mark