God or no-god?
Thoughts from Deuteronomy
I’ve been reading “The Message” Bible this year, and love how some of its different ways of phrasing things sparks me to think more deeply on what I’ve read. Today, I’m thinking about the term “no-god” that is found all through Deuteronomy.
We generally think of “no-god” people as someone who doesn’t believe in God at all. Maybe an atheist, or just an unbeliever - they don’t have to be adamantly against the concept of a deity, they’ve just never thought about it. They don’t have a god
But when The Great I Am talked about “no-gods” when he was talking to the people of Israel before they entered the promised land, he didn’t mean people who didn’t think there was a god. He meant people who had made their own gods out of wood or stone; what the Bible calls idols. But I love that phraseology: no-god. Because that’s truly what they were. They were not Adonai, they were statues made out of wood or stone to represent the beings these tribes believed in. Those tribes didn’t believe in Adonai, so those images were not of the one true God. Instead, they were no-gods.
The phrase no-god is scattered all through Deuteronomy in the version I’m reading this year. But as I read the phrase today in Deuteronomy 29, I suddenly saw another meaning for no-god. Again, the meaning is not I don’t believe in a god, or I don’t think there’s a God. The meaning I saw today is all of the things I put in place of Adonai in my life and heart.
Microsoft Copilot is a no-god, so why do I give it so much of my time? Computer Solitaire is a no-god, but it’s the first place I go when I need a break, need to calm down, or just don’t feel like thinking hard. I don’t run to God, to Adonai, to the Creator who loves me; I run to a computer card game. And I use it in place of the God who has promised to heal my every heart-ache.
This was eye-opening for me, because I tend to think I do okay as a Jesus-follower. I focus more on love than I do on judgment. I focus on gratitude -- not just for his salvation but for the physical and emotional healing that he’s given me in the last 40 years, as well as the protection he’s given me throughout my life.
But I still have a lot of no-gods that I give my attention to, instead of focusing my attention on the one true God, the God who loves me, who sits quietly beside me waiting for me to remember that he’s there and all I have to do is turn to him.
Papa God,
Forgive me for the times I reach for the no-gods instead of the true God. Continue to make me aware of the ways that I fall short so that I can continue to grow in your love and in your likeness. Give me a hunger and thirst for you that cannot be satisfied by anything else. Help me catch myself when I start to drift towards a no-god and redirect myself to you and your presence. And as always, make me more like you and teach me love.
In Jesus’ name,
amen