False Worship

In a 2024 interview the actress Julia Fox was asked, “Do you meditate or journal or otherwise practice mindfulness?” She replied:

I don’t, but I do pray. When I was little, I [prayed to] Jesus Christ. Now I pray to the universe, the collective consciousness, the karmic force behind everything. I used to pray for things that I really wanted. Now I pray to be guided, stay on the right path, for strength, for positivity. But then I also definitely do pray for things I want, too.

In Buddhist Japan, they now have robot priests. Mindar is a robo-priest which has been working at a temple in Kyoto for the last few years, reciting Buddhist sutras with which it has been programmed. The next step, says monk Tensho Goto, an excitable champion of the digital dharma, is to fit it with an AI system so that it can have real conversations, and offer spiritual advice. Goto is especially excited about the fact that Mindar is “immortal.” This means, he says, that it will be able to pass on the tradition in the future better than him.

Meanwhile, over in China, Xian’er is a touchscreen “robo-monk” who works in a temple near Beijing, spreading “kindness, compassion and wisdom to others through the internet and new media.”

In India, the Hindus are joining in, handing over duties in one of their major ceremonies to a robot arm, which performs in place of a priest.

In a Catholic church in Warsaw, Poland, sits SanTO, an AI robot which looks like a statue of a saint, and is “designed to help people pray” by offering Bible quotes in response to questions.

Not to be outdone, a protestant church in Germany has developed a robot called BlessU-2. BlessU-2, which looks like a character designed by Aardman Animations, can “forgive your sins in five different languages,” which must be handy if they’re too embarrassing to confess to a human.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Computer scientists and programmers pursue their goal of creating their own god from AI. They seek wisdom and guidance apart from the true source. “For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” (Jer. 2:13)

According to a survey, 37% of Americans think billionaires are terrible role models, and 49% said they have overall negative feelings towards them. And the heat is felt most prominently by the big-name tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos.

But despite the negative feelings, people still admire and look up to some of these individual figures. And it’s not because of just their financial success; a 2021 study found that people who stand against a class of extremely wealthy people still tend to admire individual billionaires like Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

Margaret O’Mara, a professor of history at the University of Washington, says “The secret of Silicon Valley has been the storytelling.” She describes intense admiration of tech billionaires as kind of “a religion of entrepreneurship.” With the lack of presence of other role models and declining faith in other institutions like the government or churches or even science, people want to find a myth to believe in that will give them comfort.

When you have these really exciting stories of the startup company in your dorm room or garage that then becomes this trillion-dollar company, this exciting rags to riches story really fits into an American narrative that predates Silicon Valley. Those stories are exceptional, to be clear, but I think the fault is presuming that anyone can do this.

Another story within the tech billionaire narrative that appeals to masses is that of disruption. O’Mara said, “This is a nation founded on revolution, so being a rebel, not bowing to authority and being your own boss is kind of cool.”

Richard R. John, professor of business history and journalism at Columbia University calls the hype surrounding tech billionaires a cult of personality. He says:

A cult of personality is the deliberate glorification of a specific public figure. Throughout history, cult of personality hype of billionaire figures has usually been propagated through journalists and news media. But with the founding of social media, it grew massively through its unprecedented reach. It’s no longer regional, it’s now national and even international.

The Ganges River is one of the world’s largest fresh water outlets, after the Amazon and the Congo. The headwaters emerge from a glacier high in the western Himalayas, and then drops down steep mountain canyons to India’s fertile northern plain. Just after it merges with the Brahmaputra, the Ganges empties into the Bay of Bengal. It supports more than a quarter of India’s 1.4 billion people, all of Nepal, and part of Bangladesh.

But sadly, the Ganges has also long been one of the world’s most polluted rivers. The river is befouled by poisonous bi-products from hundreds of factories and towns. Arsenic, chromium, and mercury combine with the hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage that flow into the river on a daily basis.

But despite countless studies and evidence proving the river's polluted state, environmentalists have gained little traction in cleaning up the river. Why?

The Ganges River is a sacred waterway worshipped by a billion Hindus as Mother Ganga, a living goddess with power to purify the soul, and to cleanse itself. A recent article in National Geographic explains: “There is this belief that the river can clean itself. If the river can clean itself, then why should we have to worry about it? Many people say the river cannot be polluted; it can go on forever.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

False gods are capable of cleaning neither themselves or their worshippers. Only Jesus can purify the pollution of the human heart.

When Marquis Boone first heard the gospel song “Biblical Love” by J.C., he listened to it five times in a row. “This is crazy,” he said to himself. What amazed him was not the song, but the artist. The person singing “Biblical Love” was not a person at all.

J.C. is an artificial intelligence (AI) that Boone and his team created with computer algorithms. Boone said his interest in creating a Christian AI musician began when he started hearing about AI artists in the pop music genre. He said, “I really just started thinking this is where the world is going and I’m pretty sure that the gospel/Christian genre is going to be behind.”

Christians, he said, are too slow to adopt new styles, new technologies, and new forms of entertainment—always looking like late imitators. For him, it would be an evangelistic failure not to create Christian AI music. Boone said, “If we don’t want to grow with technology or we don’t want to grow with this. I think we’re going to miss a whole generation.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

What is the nature of worship music? Should we be singing songs written by AI to praise God? Matt Brouwer, a Canadian Christian singer-songwriter with four original top-20 hits, said that the more he thought about it, the more strongly he disliked the idea. He said:

If ever there was a desperate need for a human connection and a moment when the world is longing to unplug from technology, social media and Zoom calls, it’s now. Christian music should be an invitation to join a faith journey. That invitation means more when it comes from someone who’s already on that road. The idea of opting for a nonhuman machine to produce pop Christian hits instead of engaging with true worshiping hearts and young people who need encouragement to pursue what God is leading them to, is pretty grim.

In an issue of CT magazine, Kim Phuc Phan Thi shares how a napalm attack in Vietnam scarred her body, but it also led her to Christ.

You have seen my picture a thousand times. I am nine years old, running along a puddled roadway, arms outstretched, naked, shrieking in pain and fear, the dark contour of a napalm cloud billowing in the distance. Those bombs have brought me immeasurable pain. The emotional and spiritual pain was even harder to endure.

As a child, she was raised in the religion of Cao Dai (pronounced cow-die). For years, she prayed to the gods of Cao Dai for healing and peace. But when her prayers went unanswered, it became clear that either they were nonexistent or did not care about her.

One day in 1982, in Saigon’s central library she opened the New Testament. As she read through the Gospels, at least two themes became abundantly clear. The first was that although Cao Dai said there were many gods, Jesus made a straightforward claim: “I am the way you get to God; there is no other way but me” (John 14:6). Second, Jesus had suffered in defense of his claim. He had been mocked, tortured, and killed. Why would he endure these things, she wondered, if he were not God?

I had never been exposed to this side of Jesus—the wounded one, the one who bore scars. I came to believe that he really was who he said he was. And most important to me, he really would do all that he had promised in his Word. Perhaps he could help me make sense of my pain and at last come to terms with my scars.

My salvation experience happened on Christmas Eve. It was 1982, and I was attending a special worship service at a small church in Saigon. How desperately I needed peace, love, and joy. I had so much hatred in my heart. I wanted this Jesus. So, I made my way to the front of the sanctuary to say yes to Jesus Christ. I experienced the kind of healing that can only come from God. I was finally at peace.

Nearly half a century has passed since I found myself running—frightened, naked, and in pain— down that road in Vietnam. I will never forget the horrors of that day. (But) my faith in Jesus has enabled me to forgive those who have hurt and scarred me. Today, I thank God for everything—even for that road. Especially for that road.

Brett McCracken writes in his book, The Wisdom Pyramid:

I live in Southern California, where climate-controlled houses and air-conditioned cars give us a measure of mastery over summer's triple-digit temperatures or winter's atmospheric river storms. But we can't escape nature completely. A mudslide washes away parts of Highway 1, making it impassable. The Santa Ana winds will blow, causing us to cough on the air that "tastes like a stubbed-out cigarette" as the poet Dana Gioia (aptly) says. Months of no rain crisp the Sonoran landscape, making it ripe for autumn wildfires. The weather doesn't ask for our opinion. Nature reminds us there is a world bigger than the one we've made.

A headline in the Los Angeles Times that sums it up well: "We may live in a post-truth era, but nature does not." Perhaps that's one of the reasons I've always loved nature—God's beautiful and terrifying creation. In a world where man thinks he is the measure of all things, nature begs to differ. There is a givenness to nature that is sanity in an insane world. It is there to sustain our lives, to be enjoyed, but also to challenge us, to put us in our place, and to impart to us wisdom—if we are willing to listen.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Scripture is our supreme and only infallible source of knowledge of God. But Scripture itself tells us that wisdom can be found in God's creation (Psa. 19:1-6; Rom. 1:19-20). Nature’s glory is not an end unto itself. It’s not a god to worship. It’s a prism and amplifier of God’s glory. It’s a theater, a canvas, a cathedral, but God is always at center stage.

Wellness preachers are wildly popular on Instagram. The New York Times calls them “quasi-spiritual influencers” and “Instavangelists” who have replaced the televangelist. They have online followers anywhere from 900,000 to 7.5 million (Gwyneth Paltrow). They are the “neo-religious leaders of our era.” Their online followers are composed largely of Millennials, and according to the Pew Research Center, 22% are not affiliated with any specific religion. The new belief system is “a blend of left-wing political orthodoxy, intersectional feminism, self-optimization, therapy, wellness, astrology and Dolly Parton.”

The article’s author, Leigh Stein, notes what is fundamentally missing:

Left-wing secular millennials may follow politics devoutly. But the women we’ve chosen as our moral leaders aren’t challenging us to ask the fundamental questions that leaders of faith have been wrestling with for thousands of years: Why are we here? Why do we suffer? What should we believe in beyond the limits of our puny selfhood?

Stein longs for

… role models my age who are not only righteous crusaders, but also humble and merciful, and that I’m not finding them where I live (online). ... There is a chasm between the vast scope of our needs and what influencers can provide. We’re looking for guidance in the wrong places. Maybe we actually need to go to something like church? ... I have hardly prayed to God since I was a teenager, but the pandemic has cracked open inside me a profound yearning for reverence, humility and awe. I have an overdraft on my outrage account. I want moral authority from someone who isn’t shilling a memoir or calling out her enemies on social media for clout.

In a story about country artist Willie Nelson for Rolling Stone, Patrick Doyle writes:

Nelson wrote a new song last night. It’s called “God is Love.” He speaks a verse of it, making eye contact with me and the entire time: “Take these words of wisdom with you everywhere you go/Tell all the religions in the world, and through them the truth shall flow/But God is love, and love is God, that’s all you need to know.”

Nelson says he doesn’t see God as a “big guy in the sky, making all the decisions. I think God is love, period. There’s love in everything out there – trees, grass, air, water. Love is the one thing that runs through every living thing. Everybody loves something: The grass loves the water. That’s the one thing that we all have in common, that we all love and like to be loved. That’s God.”

On February 26, 2019, a lake became human. For years, Lake Erie has been in ecological crisis. Invasive species are rampant. Biodiversity is crashing. Each summer, blue-green algae blooms in volumes visible from space, creating toxic “dead zones.” In August 2014, Lake Erie was so fouled that the city of Toledo lost drinking water for three days in the hottest part of the year.

Toledo residents were so appalled by the lake’s degradation and exhausted by government failures to improve Erie’s health that they acted. In December 2018 citizens wrote an emergency “bill of rights” for Lake Erie. It had a radical proposition: That the “Lake Erie ecosystem” should be granted legal personhood and accorded the consequent rights in law – including the right “to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.”

There have been cities in the United States that have passed ordinances making polluting illegal. But no American city or state has changed the legality of nature effectively giving personhood to a gigantic lake. Citizens could sue a polluter on behalf of the lake, and if the court finds the polluter guilty, the judge could impose penalties

The bill illustrates a movement around the world--all seeking to recognize interdependence and animacy in the living world. These are known as the”‘rights of nature” movement. Animists believe that everything that exists is alive in some way:

“Nature’s capacity … to encounter us … is the ground tone of its spiritual, vibrant power. Indigenous peoples celebrated relations with other-than-human beings that are alive with spirit, emotion, and personhood. This personhood includes ‘bear persons’ and ‘rock persons’ along with ‘human persons.’ In other words, all things are persons, only some of whom are human.”

A 2012 Pew study tracked the rise of a new religious group: the “nones,” or the religiously unaffiliated. One-fifth of Americans—and a full third of adults under 30—say they belong to no religion at all.

Yet, argues Casper ter Kuile, a researcher at Harvard Divinity School, this group is still looking for elements of religious experience. His later study explores ways modern millennials seek out meaning, community, and ritual in the absence of organized religion.

The study started by profiling organizations they deemed particularly formative in the lives of their students. One of the most striking spaces? Fitness classes. Institutions like CrossFit and SoulCycle are offering their students more than just a chance to lose weight or tone up. They function, ter Kuile argues, like religions.

“People come because they want to lose weight or gain muscle strength, but they stay for the community,” he said. “It’s really the relationships that keep them coming back.” We heard people say, “Well, Crossfit is my church,” or, “Soulcycle is like my cult,” in a good way.

“Once that religious perspective had been opened in our eyes, so many things came out. Whether it’s the flag [on display] in every CrossFit [gym]; the way that the space is set up; or how you could follow a kind of liturgy in a SoulCycle class, especially through their use of light and sound. So it’s really an emotional and spiritual experience as well as a physical one.”

Possible Preaching Angles: Church; Body of Christ; Meaning of life; Relationship - Young people are searching for self-actualization, fulfillment and a ‘spiritual’ connection. The role of the church is to show them that what they are searching for comes through a deep relationship with the living God and His people. If you want a workout, find a gym. If you want meaning, come to Jesus.

The Christian scholar Larry Taunton launched a nationwide campaign to interview college students who belong to atheistic campus groups. After receiving a flood of enquiries, Larry and his team heard one consistent theme from these young unbelievers: they often expected but didn't find more spiritual depth from their Christian neighbors. Larry writes:

Some [of these young atheists] had gone to church hoping to find answers to [tough questions about faith]. Others hoped to find answers to questions of personal significance, purpose, and ethics. Serious-minded, they often concluded that church services were largely shallow, harmless, and ultimately irrelevant. As Ben, an engineering major at the University of Texas, so bluntly put it: "I really started to get bored with church."

In contrast, these young atheists expressed their respect for those ministers who took the Bible seriously. Larry writes,

Without fail, our former church-attending students expressed [positive] feelings for those Christians who unashamedly embraced biblical teaching. Michael, a political science major at Dartmouth, told us, "I really can't consider a Christian a good, moral person if he isn't trying to convert me …. Christianity is something that if you really believed it, it would change your life and you would want to change [the lives] of others. I haven't seen too much of that."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Worship; Preaching—Surprisingly, many young atheists aren't looking for Christians who will water-down the faith. They want us to worship and preach with wholehearted devotion. (2) Commitment; Zeal; Discipleship—This story shows what lukewarm discipleship looks like to the watching world—it's blah. (3) Evangelism—These young atheists want and expect us to share our faith—assuming that it's done in an appropriate way.

When men stop worshipping God, they promptly start worshipping man, with disastrous results.

Why have we no great men? We have no great men chiefly because we are always looking for them. We are connoisseurs of greatness, and connoisseurs can never be great. ... When anybody goes about on his hands and knees looking for a great man to worship, he is making sure that one man at any rate shall not be great.

"Sport is America's newest and fastest-growing religion, far outdistancing whatever is in second place," says Charles S. Prebish, associate professor of religious studies at Pennsylvania State University. ...It is not merely "like" a religion, he argues, nor is it a "secular" religion, as other religion scholars and sociologists have postulated.

To Mr. Prebish, sport can and does provide its followers everything that traditional religions have provided over the centuries. He writes: "For me, it is not just a parallel that is emerging between sport and religion, but rather a complete identity. Sport is religion for growing numbers of Americans, and this is no product of simply facile reasoning or wishful thinking. Further, for many, sport religion has become a more appropriate expression of personal religiosity than Christianity, Judaism, or any of the traditional religions. ..."

Athletes and spectators for whom sport is religion may differ in their ideas about what the "ultimate" is, Mr. Prebish says, but sport is the vehicle by which all of them find it.