Wrong Worship
When Aaron made the golden calf, he proclaimed a feast to Jehovah. In other words, the Israelites in their idolatry did not think of themselves as forsaking the true God for a pagan god. But they were worshiping him as if he were a pagan god. Their preconceived notions, picked up from the surrounding culture, created a blind spot that made God’s revelation at Sinai go right over their heads. As a result, their worship of Jehovah was corrupted by paganism, and they were too blind to see it. And as far as God was concerned, it counted as idolatry, just as if they had consciously been worshipping Baal or Moloch.
The Israelites’ experience raises a question for us: How far is our worship corrupted by neo-paganism, secularism, and/or postmodernism? Are we willing to pray seriously that God would show us the answer to that question?
Donald T. Williams is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College. He stays permanently camped out on the borders between serious scholarship and pastoral ministry, between theology and literature, and between Narnia and Middle-Earth. He is the author of fourteen books, including Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis (DeWard, 2023). He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
33.4—July/August 2020
on Boethius's Consolation in a Time of Plague by Thomas Albert Howard
33.2—March/April 2020
An Architectural Sign of Mere Christianity by Michael Ward
30.5—Sept/Oct 2017
on Costly Grace in Breece D'J Pancake's Flyover Country by Casey Chalk
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
