Fear is Worship of Another

"No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. (Matthew 6:24a)

I want to muddle the pond a little by speaking to our situation today especially concerning this virus.

The gist of what I want to say (not imply) is that fear is actually worship. The peddlers of fear are therefore high priests of another god however secular they may want us to believe they are.

Fear seeks to force me to worship in some way the source of the same by threatening dire consequences should I refuse.

Look at Daniel.

‘Whoever does not…’ was the catch whether we are looking at Daniel or his three friends. It is the consequences that are supposed to blunt the sharp edge that is the genuine worship of God. And I want us to look at more scenarios to understand what I am saying.

When I hide to worship, especially so that nobody would suspect that I am a worshiper, I really am not worshiping the God who threatens to disown those ashamed of Him in their generation. And I am not talking about the underground church since they are known for their faith. They are only exercising it outside the established and Caesar sanctioned ecclesiastical structures. That is why many of them end up in prisons. In short they are ready to face whatever music when they are found out as opposed to wriggling their way out of danger.

I am talking about the order to stop worshiping God to please whoever for whatever. And by worship I am not talking about what we normally think is worship, singing. I am talking about living according to God’s clear revelation in His word. And that includes submitting to any other authority if it is inconsistent with that revelation.

Shadrach and his friends were not ordered not to worship their God. It was their God whose worship forbad them to place another god beside Him. I believe there were other princes who had no problem bowing to that image since they opined that the God of Abraham would understand, especially since the consequences of not doing so were dire and irreversible. And God was not at liberty to prove His power anyway.

That fear of what would happen if they defied the king was worship since it affected and was in direct opposition to their worship.

You see, there is no neutral gear in worship. You do not move from right worship to neutral worship then to other worship. It is either/or. You are worshiping God as He has prescribed or you are worshiping another. Even atheism is a worship of another god; only that this other god is called absent.

And it was the same with Daniel. They did not care whether he worshipped in secret or not provided he was not seen doing it. Again I think there were other Jews who decided to just worship in secret to escape the lions, which was not a problem with the constitution changers.

Fear takes our focus from God to the object of that fear. And basically that is worship.

… lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel … (Ezekiel 18)

Idol worship is about where our eyes are looking.

We do not need to confess worship to be worshipping. Undue focus on an object is worship.

Yet isn’t that what fear does?

That is why that object is able to shape one’s life to be in tandem with what the object of the fear is, whether it is terrorism or an epidemic.

You see, it changes the perception of who you know God to be to the point of denying some of His attributes.

Psalm 127:1 talks about God being our security. Fear of terrorism transfers God’s promise to protect us to what the object of our fear indicates.  That is why people cede their rights very easily and quickly in the face of terror.

The fear of a pandemic like the one we are being told we are in trashes God’s promise not only to give us good health but also healing to whomever the peddlers of the fear indicate. We will therefore willingly disobey what God has clearly ordered so that we do not offend the new god we fear. We are so scared of the ailment that we refuse to obey God’s clear revelation.

If that is not worship then tell me what is.

Look at Israel when they left Egypt. Was there any doubt that they worshipped God? Yet why did the bulk of them die in the wilderness?

They were for the most part scared of the desert and desert living. They feared unpredictability.

Apart from the time they made the golden calf, we do not see them having another visible idol.

That fear of the unseen and uncontrollable was the idol they were judged for worshiping.

Look at one incident in the journey to get what I mean.

At Kadesh in the wilderness, the spies brought the report with devastating accuracy.

Then Caleb spoke up and said that because the Lord had promised them the land, there was no doubt He was well able to get it for them.

Do you notice what the congregation does? They want to punish them for blasphemy! You see, stoning was the sentence for blasphemy.

Simply saying, fear had become their new god. That is why they also sought to appoint another leader to lead them into their new worship under the pretext of taking them back to Egypt.

Fear takes our eyes from God.

That is why a young man becomes so desperate that they sleep around to get a job or pass an exam since fear has made them think there is no other solution. This is why an artiste will compromise their morals to get that role. That is why a Christian musician will bribe a broadcaster to have their music on air.

All that is due to fear. And I am calling it worship because it affects our worship.

That a bishop can use all the TV airtime he is given to defend the ‘experts’ protocols against his livelihood and especially God’s word concerning the same as if God’s power is limited by the virus would be inconceivable were it not true. Yet fear explains it most accurately.

We might proclaim from the rooftops Ezekiel 37 about the dry bones. But like the Sadducees we really do not believe it can happen since fear has made us doubt the scriptures and the power of God. Our dose of ‘reality’ says that that passage is wishful thinking and over-creative imagination.

Fear makes us dichotomize our faith into what is possible and what is wishful thinking, where what is possible is dictated by the source of the fear and wishful thinking being what proceeds from faith.

Does God heal? Can He heal? Those are the answers fear meddles with (in a pandemic) to the point that we will be scared to speak what we have always held to be true from our walk of faith. And by meddling with them we are made to completely divorce our proclamations from our practice of faith. In short our mouths get divorced from our hearts.

God can heal, but …, becomes our new proclamation when faced with the real question of actual obedience. And that ‘but’ is being moderated by fear. If truth be told it really is the fear that God is not who He says He is since fear has grown too big and dwarfed Him.

Remember David facing Goliath? Why had the army of grown and trained men been running away from one giant for forty days? Fear! And had not the young shepherd boy not come in time that war had already been decided and the Philistines could have won it without throwing a single spear or killing a single Israelite.

That is the power of fear. It distorts our worship and becomes our new object of worship.

What will you do when fear impedes on your worship?

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2Timothy 1:7)