In relation to the Christian church's celebration of Easter, one of our pastors commented in a sermon that this is the only century in which people have stopped believing in any sort of god at all.
I don't think the pastor meant Western people have completely stopped worshipping gods; rather, they don't believe in gods with an sort of personality. Modern gods exist, however, and are a pretty varied bunch in spite of their impersonality.
G K Chesterton wrote: "When people stop believing in God, they do not start believing in nothing; they start believing in anything." People will turn anything into religion, whether it has a spiritual value or not.
All sorts of gods
Many people make a god of money. And a right nasty piece of work this god is too - a driving taskmaster without compare. He has a sidekick named Gambling, a greedy, addictive god.
Many choose fitness as god, or health (must eat only the right foods), or recreation (worshipped 24 hours a day where possible). There's the tubby tube-god, television; there's the god called sport (whose praise has the biggest proportion of any newspaper); and the multiple personality god/dess expressed as pop stars.
There's the great god, materialism, a god who is never satisfied, even when you've bought all the furniture imaginable on hire purchase (no deposit is his latest ploy), and are up to the eyeballs in weekly payments.
Many people now believe in themselves - not in some measure of improved self-esteem, but in claiming that they themselves are gods. A fairly ancient lie, and one that leads to considerable delusion, and disillusionment.
Atheists believe in atheism, which means not only don't they believe in God, they believe in not believing in God. Humanists also don't believe in God, but do believe in humanism, a philosophy that's turned itself into a religion. And evolutionists proclaim their theory with the fervour of the most fervent evangelists.
Then there are people who "believe" in God only as long as H fits into their little box.
What many Westerners no longer believe is in a God who knows us, cares about us, or even gives two hoots about us. Science (another one of the modern gods) is supposed to have done away with Him, but the battle still rages. If the followers of science give Him any place at all, it's to say He wound up the universe like a clockwork toy, set it going, and went off on a long holiday.
Some think He might have been round at the Big Bang - that's if they can agree that the Big Bang happened - but after that He left us to it. Whether He'll make a repeat appearance when the universe finally turns in on itself is seldom debated.
What does God Himself think?
Meanwhile God Himself sits in His heaven and laughs, rather like a father laughing at his children's inability and unwillingness to comprehend what He's really like, or to listen to what He tells them about Himself.
The facts of God don't change, like the facts about our parents, however much we may want to fit them to our own agenda.
Easter comes as a pertinent annual reminder of these facts, for those of us who've become so besotted with our petty gods we haven't got time for the One who'll make an eternal difference.
Easter gives us a chance to take a rest from the petty gods, to spend, perhaps, a bit of time in a pew, and check out those facts.
