![\"Do](\"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Worship_True_God_01_900x555.jpg\")
by Chris Banescu –\nMan is a worshiping creature. If he will not worship the true God, he will worship anything else. <\/p>\n
by Chris Banescu –
\nMan is a worshiping creature. If he will not worship the true God, he will worship anything else. <\/p>\n
God created man to live in full communion with and loving obedience to Him. The desire to worship God was built into the human heart and soul from the beginning. We were created to glorify and worship God in spirit and in truth. \u201cGod is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth\u201d (John 4:24).<\/p>\n
When man disobeyed and rebelled against God, the desire for worship also became distorted. Man\u2019s fallen nature unleashed sinful passions that lead him further astray from Ultimate Truth. Rather than worship the true God, man began worshiping false gods. And when not worshiping false gods, man found many other idols to worship instead of the real God.<\/p>\n
All men, including atheists, whether they realize it or not, worship someone or something.<\/strong> As St. Macarius the Great observed, there are no real atheists; man always worships something. We believe in, are passionate about, and dedicate a great deal of time, energy, and resources to specific things or people in our lives. We give honor and intense attention to something or someone. And if we\u2019re not primarily focused and dedicated to the true God as Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), then all those other things or individuals can become idols.<\/p>\n Some idols have been with us since ancient times. Man has always worshipped power, money, sex, fame, and material possessions. Man has also worshipped other powerful, wealthy, influential, or charismatic individuals. Many have made their stomachs their idol, constantly indulging in sumptuous food and excessive drink. Others have made their physical appearance and opulent clothing idols. And ultimately man worshipped himself, making an idol out of his own ego and selfishness.<\/p>\n More idols have appeared in modern times. Man began worshipping numerous forms of entertainment and other leisure activities, fueled by broadcast TV, computer technologies and networks, the Internet, gaming platforms, mobile devices, smartphones, social media, and the increase of sports arenas, entertainment venues, and gambling establishments. Others started to worship science and technology; putting their trust solely in godless \u201cprogress\u201d as their principal idol. And worse still, as abortion, euthanasia, pornography, and the transgender movement have shown, man\u2019s worship of depravity, delusion, and death, have now become normalized.<\/p>\n Christians are not immune from mistakenly worshipping idols.<\/strong> St. Gregory of Nyssa cautioned that \u201cevery concept formed by our understanding which attempts to attain and to hem in the divine nature serves only to make an idol of God, not to make God known.\u201d When we become obsessed with religious services, liturgical practices, and spiritual retreats, but forget about Christ and loving God with our whole hearts and minds, we turn religion into an idol. We also worship an idol of our making when we pick and choose which of God\u2019s commandments and Christ\u2019s teachings we believe in and which we reject or ignore.<\/p>\n How can we tell who we really worship?<\/strong> In one of his talks, Fr. Thomas Hopko described how to determine if we worship the true God or an idol we create: An idol always agrees with us. The true God almost never agrees with us.<\/p>\n Another way to tell, is to discern what fruits our worship produces. The genuine fruits of the Spirit are \u201clove, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control\u201d (Galatians 5:22-23). The Holy Spirit of the true God will never justify our pride, excuse our sins, gratify the flesh, or fuel the passions. So if those godly fruits are missing and our ego is comforted or the flesh is gratified, we\u2019re worshiping an idol and not the true God.<\/p>\n Let us go forth then and rightly worship the true God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) in spirit and in truth. Let us continually welcome God\u2019s wisdom, love, and grace into our minds, hearts, and souls. \u201cLet us therefore change our hearts, let us change our minds, my beloved, our minds, let us reject the idols of the mind, let us reject prejudices, let us reject ignorance, let us reject heresies and all errors, because our mind must have a certain purpose: it must thirst for truth and reach\u2014this mind of ours, as the Holy Fathers did\u2014to contemplate the mysteries of faith,\u201d reminds us Fr. Constantin Voicescu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Chris Banescu – Man is a worshiping creature. If he will not worship the true God, he will worship anything else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,26,67,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-orthodox-christianity","category-theology","category-worship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}