Umm–materialism and consumerism come immediately to mind. So does the spirit of cutthroat competition. Heck, anything that stands in the way of true love for God and our fellow human beings could be considered a “false god,” particularly if its pursuit becomes obsessive.
A couple of others are the hypersexualization of society, reducing other people to objects for one’s own gratification, and the false, feel-good spirituality which is based on emotionalism and does not inspire conversion of thought and behavior.
All you have to do is turn on the McNews anytime, twenty-four hours a day, and watch for about fifteen minutes. You’ll see people acting out in all sorts of pathetically reprehensible ways as they engage in the heartbreaking struggle for more romance, wealth, and power that is their due. Quite honestly, who cares if some heiress wears some skanky dress that reveals everything when she gets out of an overpriced, overpowered exotic car that she was probably too drunk to drive anyways? Are the people of this world so intellectually and spiritually blind that they consider such drivel news?
This isn’t to say that we should feel like worms, have no sense of self-respect, or exert no energy to better ourselves and our temporal or spiritual conditions. But I think we as a society have lost a sense of “enough.” Think about it: A person can only eat one chicken a day. Look at the obesity epidemic, and the gluttony that drives it, and while we’re at it, look at the millions of people starving in this world. You can only live in a certain number of rooms, yet people have bankrupted themselves and the nation in acquiring what would have been mansions in our grandparents’ generation. People work long and hard hours in demanding jobs for no better reason than acquiring toys, and being able to be secure and slothful later on (only we call that “retirement.”) People backbite and prevaricate to climb the corporate ladder, stepping on colleagues and undercutting coworkers in the process in order to get ten bucks more in their paychecks. And what’s more, people feel entitled to these things, sacrifice religious pursuits, family relationships, and all the things that truly make life worthwhile to get them. Or they whine and demand others to provide them for them.
I’d say all that stuff is “false gods,” when we sacrifice everything that makes living pleasant to get them and follow this insanity into an early grave, and quite probably, the maw of hell. Jesus was not only God and Savior, but an incredibly wonderful psychologist, when He said, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?”
Just my two cents on the matter: That and 98 cents more will get you a cup of coffee at Mickey D’s!
