Have you ever wondered why the religious history of the world has been dominated by polytheism? In fact, some sociologists believe that polytheism was the first manifestation of the religious inclinations of mankind. I would argue, however, that monotheism came first and was later transformed into polytheism. Why? Because monotheism is hard, and polytheism is easy.

The original sin of thinking we are gods is quite difficult if only one God exists but is quite fashionable if the world is filled with them. Polytheism allows rebellious humans to draw and quarter the God of consequence and make Him suitable only for postmortem examination. Polytheism doesn’t replace God, it just allows us to harvest His organs and set them up as individual objects of worship. We cut out His love and worship Aphrodite, we eviscerate His joy and worship Dionysus, and we dissect His wisdom and worship Athena. We know that if the gods are limited to certain spheres of influence then they will be powerless outside their domains, but we also know that if there is only one true God then we have some ‘splainin to do.

“They may have regarded it as an enrichment of their religious life; but it meant the final loss of all that we now call religion…God is really sacrificed to the gods; in a very literal sense of the flippant phrase, they have been to many for him.” (G.K. Chesterton)

When we limit God’s power we are stealthily building up our own. We become like Roman emperors graciously inviting other gods to display their “divine” works in the religious cultural museum but then insist that the curator also be worshipped. We invite ourselves to the pantheon celebration but then declare ourselves the life of the party. Wanting to avoid the label of divine pretender we occasionally step off Mt. Olympus and deceptively acknowledge the other gods in our lives such as lust, greed and power, knowing full well that all we have really done is set up divine straw men to deflect attention from our veiled acts of self-worship.

We cannot treat God as if He signed a divine donor card granting us permission to harvest His organs and transplant them into the areas of our broken spiritual lives that most need treatment. We cannot sign His death certificate and dissect Him into polytheistic pieces, placing each individual organ in a specimen jar, and then worshipping His pickled remains. Jesus didn’t die to donate his organs to fix our ailing spiritual health, He died to give new life to a people who were already dead in their sins.

For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:10-11)

Photo by Matt Briney on Unsplash