So Many Gods

Our world is full of gods, all competing with the only true God.

For example, ancient Greeks envisioned the existence of twelve gods in Olympus and many other lower gods, all with human forms and passions.

Aristotle stated, “People make the lives of the gods in the likeness of their own—as they also make their shapes.”16 A century earlier, Xenophanes declared, “But if horses or oxen or lions had hands or could draw with their hands and accomplish such works as men, horses would draw the figures of the gods as similar to horses, and the oxen as similar to oxen, and they would make the bodies of the sort which each of them had. Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black; Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired.”17 The two Greek philosophers are right about the gods and idols that human beings have created for themselves (Isaiah 44:9–20).

The trouble starts when, confused and frustrated by so many gods created over time, one believes the only true God is just another human projection.

In her book A History of God, Karen Armstrong suggested that the prophets of Israel ascribed “their own feelings and experiences to God” and “monotheists have in some sense created a God for themselves.”18 On June 8, 2009, Robert Wright’s book The Evolution of God was released with a similar humanist perspective. Wright says, “Abrahamic monotheism grew organically out of the ‘primitive’ by a process more evolutionary than revolutionary.”19 Crucial to the whole discussion is the question, Is what the Bible says about God just a human creation of God or a divine revelation from God? Both Armstrong and Wright would propose the former option, but the Bible itself asserts the latter. We are assured that “prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21, NIV). Those who insinuate that the God of the Bible is an imagined god are creating their own human god—themselves. That has to be the case, because anyone or anything that takes the place of God becomes the god. And God’s commandment is clear: “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3). The only way to avoid idolatry is to believe in the one true God.