Think It Couldn't Happen Here?

Lenny Cacchio has a poignant essay today, titled, The Gods of Egypt. Check it out:

"For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn of the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment." (Exodus 12:12)

Before Israel came out of Egypt, God brought a series of plagues upon the Egyptian people. Most scholars believe that the plagues were God's systematic rebuttal of the gods of Egypt, for each plague showed their impotence and even destroyed the objects of worship.

The Nile, the giver of life to the nation, was the greatest of the gods, and it was the first to be cursed. Frogs were the symbol of fruitfulness of offspring, and God cursed the land by an overabundance of them.

The plague of flies was a repudiation of Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies. Moses initiated the plague of boils by sprinkling ashes, which was a repudiation of the god Typhon, whom the Egyptians tried to appease by burnt human sacrifice. And the locusts revealed that the god Serapis was powerless to stop the infestation that he was responsible to prevent.

And when there as darkness of the land for three days, Ra was shown to be nothing when compared to the great Yahweh.

We have our own false gods today to whom we pay our homage. It has been said that in order to get the attention of an American, simply kick him in the pocketbook. . We worship the goddess named Fortune because we hold wealth and possessions as a measure of success.

We worship the god named Status, for we crave position and the adulation of others.

We worship a goddess called Liberty (whom we should really call Libertine), and in the name of that god claim the right to do whatever we please with no regard for consequences.

We sacrifice babies on the altar of Erotica, claiming freedom of choice but only in matters from the waist down.

We bow at the altar of Narcissus, where self-made men worship their creator.

Your god is what you think about most of the time. Your god is the one you trust for deliverance, sustenance, and meaning in life. As we enter this Passover season, we should think long and hard about the gods we worship. The true God systematically removed the objects of Egyptian worship until all were forced to acknowledge the One who is supreme. Will God be forced to remove from us our false gods before we finally and completely turn to him?

Lenny Cacchio