"Our silly gods"?

Just finished watching the 81st Academy Awards Ceremony. Excellent!

Was really enraptured by the movies that were done in 2008. They also showed preview of some of the movies that are going to come up in 2009.

However, some other thing struck me during the awards ceremony. During the "Best Documentary" awards segment, Bill Maher, one of America's agnostical personality, was hosting that segment. In jest, he asked why his documentary "Religulous" was not selected as one of this year's documentary. He also mentioned about the ridiculity in belieiving in "our silly gods".

Well, for those who do not understand why Bill Maher's documentary was entitled "Religulous", he wanted to point out that to be "religious" means to be "ridiculous", hence "Religulous". For those who are expecting me to scream "Heretic!" and therefore shoot Bill Maher down for his remarks on international television, I am not. In fact, I am saying the Maher is coming from the perspective of an America that has been using religion for their personal means.

In a "Newsweek" magazine article I once read, the Bush Administration had used Biblical verse to justify their warfare policies, those on Afghanistan and also on Iraq. The Catholic Church in America saw a huge amount of priests victimizing young altar boys in their paedophilia. The 9/11 incident in America was also percieved as a clash between Islam and Christianity (which I personally feel it is not). No wonder Bill Maher is so against organized religion.

However, "our silly gods" clearly misses the point on God. If it is gods created by human hands or human ideology, I will understand how Maher's "our silly gods" would work, however, the Christian God is defined not by man, but by God Himself. When we scrutinize the Bible clearly, God has always been revealing Himself to man. The incidents where man revealed God to the public, like the prophets, they did not choose to see God, God chose to reveal Himself to them.

Consider Jeremiah 19:4-5, "4 For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned sacrifices in it to gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.5 They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal--something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind."

God warned against "our silly gods", that demand "the blood of the innocent". Consider how people have worshipped money, and have backstabbed many in the corporate world. Consider how people have worshipped their spouse, only to have been betrayed by them.

Our security should never lie in "our silly gods". They should lie in Christ, in God. This I will agree with Bill Maher, but not his documentary's argument.