America's Up and Down Religions

Full and empty houses of worship

If pictures say a thousand words, then the pictures displayed above speak volumes about the spiritual condition of the United States, circa 2014.

Certainly, you can easily find empty sports stadiums where bad teams toil (see Chicago) just as you can find mega-churches overflowing with thousands of worshipers. Unfortunately, both the former and latter examples are becoming harder to find.

And ironically, despite the tough economic times, many folks still seem to find the big coin to attend the big outdoor secular churches where they can worship their favorite professional athletes.

Even more ironically, in troubled economic times where the CEOs of large corporations are ridiculed for their lavish compensation packages, professional athletes who are ridiculously overpaid are routinely given a pass because they serve as religious figures who are worshiped by adoring fans.

One such athlete is Zack Greinke, a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers who is being paid $28 million this year (yes, you read that correctly) to throw a baseball. 

Greinke is certainly a good pitcher. He won the American League's coveted Cy Young Award in 2009 as a member of the then lowly Kansas City Royals. He's always been considered among baseball's elite pitchers. However, he's never won 20 games in a season and he's never been to the World Series, although that's not necessarily his fault.

And yet not too many folks are wailing about Greinke's obscene compensation package. Nor are they complaining about the myriad of other professional athletes who rake in the big coin. 

And why not? Because professional athletes make people feel good when they excel at their professions. And that motivates people to worship professional athletes. That's called idolatry and idolatry is an abominable sin in God's eyes, no matter whether the idols are made of stone or flesh and blood.

Fallen human beings create idols out of many other human beings besides professional athletes. Rock stars, television and movie celebrities and even politicians are often worshiped as deities. And that's as evil as it is wrong.

The first two of the Ten Commandments tell us this: (1) "You shall have no other gods before me." (2) "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments." (Exodus 20:3-6)

Sadly, biblical prophecy has warned us that two of the signs concerning increased wickedness in the end times would be the increase in greed and pleasure-seekers. (2 Timothy 3:1-5) 

Greed and the desire for unrestrained pleasure inevitably lead to idolatry. And we don't have to look very far to realize that end time prophecy is being fulfilled when we see just what people are worshiping these days. And the venues they're worshiping their idols in.