What is the worship of false gods, and does it include things like money or sex?

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Robert_Sock

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I believe that placing our FULL attention on anything other than God is very much a worship of a false god. A person who is devout in their worship of the true God can develop the skill to always place a part of their attention on the worship of God. This is a state of continuous prayer.

I find that whenever I reach out to people with my full attention, I stumble Spiritually. I have never been able to reach out to people for as long as I can remember. It’s as if God aways wants my attention.

Reach high, and continually keep a part of your attention on God! The Spiritual rewards are GREAT!
 
Robert_Sock said:
I believe that placing our FULL attention on anything other than God is very much a worship of a false god. A person who is devout in their worship of the true God can develop the skill to always place a part of their attention on the worship of God. This is a state of continuous prayer.

I find that whenever I reach out to people with my full attention, I stumble Spiritually. I have never been able to reach out to people for as long as I can remember. It’s as if God aways wants my attention.

Reach high, and continually keep a part of your attention on God! The Spiritual rewards are GREAT!
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Hi Robert, I’ve always been shy, unassertive, fearful and anxious personality, kind of dim-witted, slow-witted, scatter-brained, naive, all these wonderful attributes repels or amuses people, either way loneliness and mortifying isolation are inevitable. God did that to me because he wants my full attention? Rubbish. He let me be born, my parents’ lousy genes expressed themselves, and I am a talentless, hopeless, socialy inept, emotionally washed up dummy headed for hell. If you’re born blind, God has nothing special for you, you got a losing lottery ticket, that is all. The only worldview that makes sense given all the personal sufferings, broken lives, neglected children is deism, God sits back and watch, amused, as some of us get badly bruised from this awesome life. Prayer will in most cases make what was once unbearable barely bearable, that’s pretty much all you can expect from our God.
 
Robertanthony said:
Hi Robert, I’ve always been shy, unassertive, fearful and anxious personality, kind of dim-witted, slow-witted, scatter-brained, naive, all these wonderful attributes repels or amuses people, either way loneliness and mortifying isolation are inevitable. God did that to me because he wants my full attention? Rubbish. He let me be born, my parents’ lousy genes expressed themselves, and I am a talentless, hopeless, socialy inept, emotionally washed up dummy headed for hell. If you’re born blind, God has nothing special for you, you got a losing lottery ticket, that is all.
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GOD did that because HE loves You with a special love. HE calls You specially to share in HIS Suffering, so that Your merit and treasure can be great in the kingdom of Heaven. Don’t waste the opportunity.
 
When you make anything other than God an end in itself then you have worshipped a false God.
 
mymamamary said:
GOD did that because HE loves You with a special love. HE calls You specially to share in HIS Suffering, so that Your merit and treasure can be great in the kingdom of Heaven. Don’t waste the opportunity.
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No, simply genes’ expression and bad luck. Things are way more prosaic, a woman giving birth at 40 has more chances of delivering a child with Down syndrome, not because God wants to tell her something, but because genes speak louder than God. God humbly bows down to genetics.
 
Robertanthony said:
No, simply genes’ expression and bad luck. Things are way more prosaic, a woman giving birth at 40 has more chances of delivering a child with Down syndrome, not because God wants to tell her something, but because genes speak louder than God. God humbly bows down to genetics.
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You call it luck while others call it God’s will. You say God bows down to genetics and others say God created genetics therefore they do what he designed them to do.
 
Scapegoat said:
You call it luck while others call it God’s will. You say God bows down to genetics and others say God created genetics therefore they do what he designed them to do.
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Yeah, God made the laws and principles governing the universe and now these laws dictate the outcomes. If I jump off an airplane without a parachute, I doubt God actively wills that I die, I will, however, thanks to gravity and God’s permissive will. And for my own (frail) sanity, i have to find a way to convince myself that God didn’t actively will my being a mediocre human being. Let’s say he bows down to his own creation (genetics). He lets it do what it’s programmed to do without interfering, despite what the “wonderfully and fearfully made” verse suggests.
 
Well, I’m a horrible person. When I am cooking, I’m not focused on God. I am focused on chopping, so I don’t cut my fingers or I’m focused on making sure I don’t burn myself. When I am teaching my class, I am focused on teaching or what I need to do next. I don’t think I am worshiping food or my job just because I am focused on that task.
When I am driving, I am focused on driving. If I wasn’t focused on driving, I could harm myself or others. :confused:
 
KendraDZ1902 said:
Well, I’m a horrible person. When I am cooking, I’m not focused on God. I am focused on chopping, so I don’t cut my fingers or I’m focused on making sure I don’t burn myself. When I am teaching my class, I am focused on teaching or what I need to do next. I don’t think I am worshiping food or my job just because I am focused on that task.
When I am driving, I am focused on driving. If I wasn’t focused on driving, I could harm myself or others. :confused:
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We are all sinners!
 
KendraDZ1902 said:
Well, I’m a horrible person. When I am cooking, I’m not focused on God. I am focused on chopping, so I don’t cut my fingers or I’m focused on making sure I don’t burn myself. When I am teaching my class, I am focused on teaching or what I need to do next. I don’t think I am worshiping food or my job just because I am focused on that task.
When I am driving, I am focused on driving. If I wasn’t focused on driving, I could harm myself or others. :confused:
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“Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.”
-Matthew 22:37
 
Robert_Sock said:
I believe that placing our FULL attention on anything other than God is very much a worship of a false god. A person who is devout in their worship of the true God can develop the skill to always place a part of their attention on the worship of God. This is a state of continuous prayer.

I find that whenever I reach out to people with my full attention, I stumble Spiritually. I have never been able to reach out to people for as long as I can remember. It’s as if God aways wants my attention.

Reach high, and continually keep a part of your attention on God! The Spiritual rewards are GREAT!
Click to expand...
I think God manifests himself through all his works, including other people and animals and plants. Therefore, no matter who or what you are addressing, you are paying attention to God as long as you realize that they are part of him. However if you treat other people and things badly and have no respect or reverence for them, you are disrespecting God and his creations.

As to worshipping money or sex, you are indeed worshiping Satan’s temptations and his pomp. Those are very selfish things to love and revere.
 
ngill09 said:
So you think that people are not themselves worthy of love?
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People are worthy of love because they were created in the likeness of God.

I also have psychological motivations to show love to people, which are not separate from my own creation in the image of God. But empathy is not sufficient on its own, as studies show that people are provincial when it comes to demonstrating empathy towards the “other.”
 
Robert_Sock said:
Again, we’re all sinners due to our fallen nature. God is perfectly capable lading the jet airliner if only we could worship Him with “all our mind.”
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I hope that pilot would let his or her bosses and passengers know that. that’s fair, right? tell the people who are paying said pilot and the passengers entrusted to his or her care that he or she won’t be paying full attention to the instrument panel? we should have a right to make our individual decisions in that instance.
 
Robert_Sock said:
I believe that placing our FULL attention on anything other than God is very much a worship of a false god. A person who is devout in their worship of the true God can develop the skill to always place a part of their attention on the worship of God. This is a state of continuous prayer.
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My understanding is that this “state of continuous prayer” is an ideal that is very hard to reach, and has perhaps been reached by few other than some of the saints. I think it is unreasonable to say that idolatry is taking place outside of it. One should be mindful of God when it is prudent to do so.

Take the example of the pilot: The lives of your passengers are entrusted to you. Out of respect for their dignity, you focus on flying as much as is necessary. You are not making a false god out of flying, the object of your immediate attention. You are showing respect for creation.
 
Fairwinds said:
I hope that pilot would let his or her bosses and passengers know that. that’s fair, right? tell the people who are paying said pilot and the passengers entrusted to his or her care that he or she won’t be paying full attention to the instrument panel? we should have a right to make our individual decisions in that instance.
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Just wait for the World-to-Come when all traces of sin are washed away! “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”
 
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