What is it like to worship many gods? I could say I have no idea, but that wouldn’t be accurate. I am always tempted toward some version of God-plus-something-else. John Calvin was right when he called the human heart “a perpetual factory of idols.”

Abram understood competing gods, too. He came from a place called Ur, a polytheistic culture. Then Yahweh spoke. God did what idols could never do. He addressed Abram personally and commanded him to leave Ur, to leave everything familiar behind. Miraculously, he did it. 

Abram’s world of household gods, displayed on shelves, can feel far removed from me. But it isn’t. My idols just seem more respectable. A family legacy can be sacred enough that obeying God feels like a betrayal of the people I love. A person I’m attached to can occupy more emotional territory than God Himself. These kinds of idols must be watched, managed, and put in their proper place because good things become gods the moment I cannot imagine living without them.

This is where God presses hard for an answer. Daily, He searches my heart. He will not accept a place among competing loyalties. Everything must find its rightful place beneath Him, because no one and nothing can bear the weight of worship but God.

“From the rising of the sun to the place of its setting, people may know there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other.” Isaiah 45:6