"If the Lord Is God, Follow Him:" Fighting Against the Culture of False Gods

Elijah said, “How long will you straddle the issue?  If the Lord is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him.”

When I read this verse, thoughts of the bizarre world that we are currently living in flooded into my mind. We live in a time when our Catholic Christian values are being abandoned by large numbers of people. Unfortunately, all of us have family and friends who have fallen to this. Far too often, instead of surrendering ourselves to the love and mercy of God, we make gods out of pleasure, wealth, comfort, and political and cultural ideologies.  We sometimes even treat our own opinions as more important than the truth of the gospel. We're willing to fight even those we love, and who love us, to justify a lifestyle that is at best sinful if not downright evil. At times, it really feels like we’re living in a bizarre world.

Elijah lived in a time much like ours, when many of the people were abandoning belief in the one true God and worshiping the pagan and (of course) false god Baal. This had become so prevalent in the popular culture of his time that the prophets of God were being killed off one by one. It got to the point that Elijah was the only surviving prophet of the Lord God while there were 450 prophets of the false god Baal. Putting his life at risk, Elijah cried out to them and said, “How long will you straddle the issue?  If the Lord is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him.”

You see, these are the people of Israel, God’s chosen ones. While they claimed they believed in the Lord God, they at the same time were worshiping the false god Baal because that it had become the popular and safe thing to do. 

We see a similar thing taking place in our culture today when we hear people proudly say things like: 

“Yes, I’m Catholic, but I think a woman should be able to choose to get an abortion."  

"Yes, I’m a staunch Catholic but what could be wrong with same-sex marriage? Love is love, right?"  

"Yes, I love Jesus and the Catholic Church, but it’s just too hard for me to go through the annulment process before I get remarried."  

And the list goes on and on. So often we claim that we love the Lord with all our heart and that our life is focused on God when the lived reality is: we've made it all about us. It’s all about me, myself and I, not considering how our decisions and actions negatively affect our relationship to those we love and, even more seriously, affect our relationship with God. Those decisions and actions can put our eternal salvation at risk.
  
Now, I know this is tough to hear, but if any of these things touches a wound in your heart, don’t feel like the lone ranger.  Every one of us, has either been there before, are just now coming out of this kind of error in our life of faith, or we are in the middle of it. Some of us are still struggling to let go of some of our old ideas, opinions, and beliefs, which in big or small ways go against the teachings of Jesus and his Church.  

Make no mistake about it, we are all sinners, and standing up for what is right is never easy. It wasn’t easy for Elijah who was putting his life at risk and it’s not easy for us even if our risk is just getting someone upset with us or risking damaging our relationship with them. It’s important to remember, however, that while we should never berate someone who is not living their faith, it is our responsibility to speak the truth in a loving way, praying that we can be a part of bringing them back to God, and not pushing them further away. We also must understand that it is not loving someone to "go along to get along," by telling them that something they are involved in that is sinful and not good for them is actually good and should be celebrated. That is not real love.   

We should follow Elijah’s lead. He was right: if the Lord is God, then follow him, not make up your own god like Baal or any worldly thing and see where that gets you. The funny thing is that when Elijah saw that Baal was failing to answer the prayers of his prophets and rain down fire to burn the sacrifice, Elijah actually taunted them. Elijah said, “Call louder, for he is a god and may be meditating, or may have retired, or he may be on a journey.  Perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” While giving them a hard time was probably fun for Elijah, and while we may be tempted at times to do this as well, it may not be the best way to win friends and influence people. Elijah, however, wasn’t worried about that, he had total faith that when called upon the Lord God would show his power to the people. 

After the prophets of Baal had given up, Elijah got his turn. He said a simple prayer to God concluding with, “Answer me, that this people may know that you, Lord, are God,” and fire immediately consumed the entire burnt offering! Seeing this, all the people fell prostrate and said, “The Lord is God! The Lord is God!” I believe that even today if we witnessed a miracle of God as powerful as the one the people of Elijah’s time saw we probably would exclaim, “The Lord is God!” as well. The issue, however, is not that we never see God work powerfully in our lives, because he does.  This issue is that our memories are short. When things settle down, it doesn’t take long before we start running from the truth of the gospel again and slip back to our old life of doing things our way instead of God’s way, and even encouraging others to do the same. 

Brothers and sisters, this point is not lost in this reading. Jesus clearly states to the disciples that his purpose in coming to earth and wasn’t to make life easy so we could have fun all the time and do things our way. He came to show us the importance of living according to his teachings, which are the path to holiness in which ultimate happiness lies. He not only tells us of the seriousness of breaking his commandments but also the danger of leading others to sin. He tells us that whoever obeys and teaches his commandments with be called greatest in heaven, and whoever breaks his commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in heaven. My friends, let us surrender ourselves to the Lord, giving him all that we are, all that we have been, and all that we ever could be. Let us strive each day to obey and teach his commandments so that when the day comes (not so long from now) that we meet him face to face, he will have a look of complete joy on his face and embrace us for eternity in his unimaginable love. Amen.