What Gods Are You Worshiping?

Last updated on: March 2, 2023 at 8:07 am by Andrew Lang

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What Gods Are You Worshiping? 2023-02-28T08:17:58-08:00 Andrew Lang

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

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The reason I left the Church was because the god I was handed simply wasn’t believable.

Raised on rational and critical thought, I couldn’t understand the idea of an all-powerful man-being in the sky, just above the terrestrial plain but never in a specific location, who looks down and passes judgement upon us all.

I went to my parents and asked about why we used masculine language for this god. I asked about the existence of heaven and hell. I asked about justice and salvation. I couldn’t rationally grasp the literal existence of such a being.

And on top of not being able to conceptualize such a god, I also had no experience of this kind of being.

At no point in my life had I seen or felt this Zeusian figure showing up to save the day, let alone asking me to worship “him.”

When I was younger, my Xbox froze as I was in the middle of passing from Kurt Warner to Torry Holt in Madden 2003 (for some reason, I liked the Rams). Jumping up from the couch, I remember getting on my hands and knees, praying to this god, negotiating a truce:

“If you unfreeze my Xbox, I promise I’ll pray every day from here on out!”

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When no answer came and I pitifully had to restart the game console and lose all my hard-won progress, I had experiential proof that this god didn’t exist, couldn’t hear me, or obviously didn’t care about the important things happening down here on Earth.

If I could neither logically or experientially prove this god existed, I figured it didn’t.

And I’m so thankful for that.

Something I believe on a deep soul-level: we become the gods we worship.

I don’t just mean divine beings – I mean the things we take as sacred and never-to-be-challenged. I mean the systems we promote and maintain. I mean the energies of our imperfect world that we’ve metabolized and now cloak ourselves in.

If we see the shape of reality as judgmental, we have cover to be judgmental.

If we view the world as good vs. bad, we have cover to live in the binaries.

And, to use my example above, if the gods we worship sometimes don’t show up, we have a glorious excuse to do the same.

What gods are you worshiping?

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From now until March 10th, you can sign up for my free 5-day email series titled 5 Days to Get Off Autopilot: Lessons, Guidance, and Activities for Becoming More Intentional With Your Life.

You can also connect with me on Instagram and through The Wednesday 1-2-3, a weekly email where I share 1 contemplative and embodied teaching, 2 questions for your inner work, and 3 resources to step into your communities in new ways.

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About Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang is an educator in the Pacific Northwest, an alumnus of Richard Rohr’s Living School for Action and Contemplation, and author of Unmasking the Inner Critic: Lessons for Living an Unconstricted Life. Along with writing regularly, he facilitates workshops helping people to navigate their inner lives and explore their sense of identity and spirituality. You can read more about the author here.

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