Reserve The Pedestal For God

Money, career, romantic partners (even your spouse), gurus, influencers, political leaders, AI, longevity drugs, sports teams, your nation‑state.

What happens when you worship anything other than the Most High God?

You violate God's commandment against idolatry—putting anything before Him.

Here's how it works: Anything you give the attention, gratitude, and energy owed to God becomes an idol.

When you worship God alone, everything else falls into proper perspective.

Unlike ancient golden calves, modern idols disguise themselves as progress, passion, or patriotism. They don't demand explicit worship; they quietly steal your mental and emotional energy through obsession, anxiety, and misplaced devotion.

The danger is that most people don't recognize when they've made idols of good things. They think their intense devotion to career, relationship, or cause is virtuous rather than spiritually destructive.

The Modern Idol Factory

Three categories show how contemporary culture systematically creates false worship:

Celebrity and Influencer Worship

K-Pop idol factories engineer parasocial relationships where fans invest emotional energy in strangers. Social media influencers become lifestyle gods whose opinions shape followers' identities. Celebrity culture trains people to worship human charisma instead of divine character. The entertainment industry monetizes devotion that should flow to God.

Technology and AI Idolatry

Silicon Valley promotes AI as humanity's savior and future god. Tech evangelists worship innovation as inherently good, regardless of spiritual consequences. Cryptocurrency becomes digital golden calves promising salvation through speculation. People treat their devices like sacred objects, checking them compulsively for validation and meaning.

Success and Status Worship

Career becomes identity rather than calling. Bank account balance determines self-worth. Educational credentials create class hierarchies that replace spiritual hierarchy. Social status through consumption replaces spiritual richness through surrender. Achievement addiction disguises pride as productivity.

My Experience With Modern Idolatry

I've made idols of many things before recognizing the spiritual damage.

• I idolized my career and social media following over spiritual character. Worldly achievement mattered more than divine favor.

• I made an idol of my intelligence. Being right mattered more than being loving.

• I idolized worldly security. Money anxiety revealed where my trust actually resided—in portfolio performance rather than divine provision.

Each idol promises security, meaning, or transcendence that only God can provide. When you put anything else on the pedestal, it eventually disappoints because created things cannot bear the weight of worship designed for the Creator.

I've learned that the more I direct my attention, gratitude, and energy toward God, the better my life becomes. The more my mind and heart focus on Him, the clearer I see everything else—including the beauty and meaning He created, rather than false substitutes.

Recognition and Resistance

Ask these diagnostic questions about anything you find yourself obsessing over:

1. Does this receive more of my mental energy than God does?
2. Do I feel anxious when this thing is threatened or unavailable?
3. Does my identity depend on this thing's success or approval?
4. Would losing this devastate me spiritually?
5. Would losing this devastate me more than losing God’s presence?

False idols reveal themselves through anxiety, obsession, and identity dependence. When you worship God alone, you can lose anything else without losing yourself.

Don't idolize your nation state, your denomination, your city, your school, your political party, or even your family. Love them appropriately, but worship only God.

The moment you make anything else your ultimate concern, it becomes a source of spiritual bondage rather than blessing.

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth:" — Exodus 20:3-4

"Little children, keep yourselves from idols." — 1 John 5:21