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Salvation,

I just finished this article. I did not want to hijack your thread so I am sending it to you privately. It is amazing lately that God is putting on my heart to write about most of the things you are posting...He must really want to get the info out. If you feel it is relevant, please feel free to post it. Thanks for all you do in your posting. Your articles are informative and help me stretch and grow my faith!

IDOL WORSHIPPERS

I am the Lord, Thy God, Thou shall have NO other Gods before me. The first commandment. The big Kahuna. If you stop for a moment and look at the 10, they are listed in a sort of heirarchy of importance. Not that any are more or less violatable than the next, they all made the top 10, but God always has a reason for every word in Scripture, and how it affects our lives if we obey or disobey His will. Lets look at the 10 as a whole.

1. I am the Lord, thy God, Thou shall have no other gods before me.
2. Thou shall not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain.
3. Remember to keep the Lords day Holy.
4. Thou shall honor thy Father and thy Mother
5. Thou shalt not kill
6. Thou shalt not commit adultry
7. Thou shalt not steal
8. Thou shalt not bear false witness
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors goods

The first 3 deal directly with our relationship to God himself. These are the top priority on Gods list, and the one at the very top deals with His pre eminence overall. The second 3 deal with our bodies. It is how each of us, personally, honor God with ourselves. We were created by the union of our parents in their cooperation with Gods miracle of life. Our bodies ARE their bodies in that sense. The last 4 deal with our actions toward fellow human beings. It is a measuring tool to deal with behavior.

As if these were in any way ambiguous, Jesus gave us 2 commandments that summed them up perfectly. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your body, and love thy neigbor as thyself. All the other commandments rest on these. In keeping these two, we are keeping the whole of Gods law, since it would require us to put God at the forefront of our lives in all aspects, and to do nothing to our fellow man that we would not want done to us.

There is another reason for the heirarchy of the commandments. By violating the first, it reduces and eventually eliminates the reasons for keeping the rest. Think about it. If we do not do homage to God because he is God, what is left to do? To replace Him with a false idol-which would mean literally anything that we love more than God, would send the rest of the commandments into oblivion. Why not take the Lords name in vain? Why keep the Lords day holy? Who cares if I honor my parents? What difference does it make if I kill, cheat, steal or lie? Who is going to judge me?

When we replaced God with money, power, sex, and whatever else fills our hearts and minds, we actually replaced God with ourselves. We made ourselves our own god, and decided what was worthy of our worship. What takes the place of Church on Sunday for you? A softball game? Surfing? Football? Work? Shopping? What things keep you from your prayer life, or Scripture? In less than 200 years, a country that was founded by God fearing men on Christian principles has replaced those values in favor of hedonism and greed. We have become worshippers of the American Idol.

Just what are we teaching our children? Most kids today cannot answer even the most basic questions about God. They cannot name the last 2 presidents. They have no idea how to complete the most basic math problem (just try to watch them make change if their cash register is down!) Yet, they know all about the latest Hollywood gossip, they can send 10,000 text messages a month, and know the difference between a fake and real Coach handbag! They will spend $150.00 on a pair of shoes, but balk at donating their time for charity. The amount of children who are being raised with values such as these is staggering, and the ones being raised with Christian values is small. Society has now reaped what it has sown in this degredation of morality. The decedant lifestyle, the entitlement mentality has wrought unimaginable pain on our country. The excessive greed and pursuit of the idol of money and decadence has brought its promised fruit of pain and suffering to our country.

It is time for people to look deep within themselves and answer serious questions about their part in this decline of Christian values and return their hearts, minds, bodies and souls to their Creator. If you truly love your children, then be a parent and teach them, through your actions, the values that are instrumental to your faith. The majority of people in this country claim Christianity as their faith. If the majority would return to living it instead of paying lip service, we would repair the damage caused to our country and return to our place issued at our nations founding- the shining city on a hill. Until then, we are destined to decline. We cannot worship the creation and expect the Creators blessing.