He not only considered it trivial to commit the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, but he also married Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him. – 1 Kings 16:31

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 26, 2013): 1 Kings 16

There is a very familiar degeneration in our thought process. The first time we do something, we often can lay out the reasoning for why we do it – or why this thing is right. We argue with ourselves until the moment when we make the decision, and then we evaluate. But the more that we do the action, the less we think of the reasons why. The action simply becomes one of the things that we do. In organizations, there are a lot of these activities that have become the sacred cows in our midst. At one point they were actions that served a purpose, but somewhere along the road we lost the purpose and they just became things that we do. In the church, we add to this process that these sacred cows are somehow holy and designed by God when the truth was that we were the ones that had designed the behavior – and we designed it for a purpose that has long since been lost.

When I grew up, churches did something called “bus ministry.” Bus ministry was this thing where the church sent out buses into the neighborhoods to pick up kids and it was hugely successful – at least for a time. But bus ministry died, and it died for a very good reason. It became apparent that not all churches could be trusted with the most precious treasure of the society – our children. I wish it wasn’t so, but it is. And the idea that a parent would send a child off on a bus to a place that they did not know and had never attended was almost a form of child abuse. But every once in a while, I still hear the suggestion – we should start a bus ministry. Something that once had a purpose has now become nothing more than a sacred cow idea. We don’t really understand the why anymore, we just know that it worked and so think we should do it again.

Jeroboam had formed two calves and he told Israel that these calves were the God of Israel, the very being that had brought them out of Egypt. But there was a reason behind the tale. Jeroboam was scared that if the people over whom he was king had to go to Jerusalem and the temple that was built there, that somehow the Davidic Kingdom of the south would renew their hold on over the people. And so Jeroboam set up a new and different form of worship, but he had a reason behind his idea. And what he was really saying was this – I will worship the God of Israel, the one that we call Yahweh. But I will worship him in my own way. When Ahab came to power in the Davidic Kingdom of the South, and he said I will follow Jeroboam because I think his way is cool – and I want desperately to get away from the God of Israel. And because of Ahab’s attitude and his lack of a reason for what he did – Ahab was considered to be more evil than even Jeroboam who had started the whole process. It is not that Jeroboam was right, because he was not. But at least Jeroboam clearly understood the why.

We need to evaluate our sacred cows – and we have a lot of them. And some of our sacred cows are just simply actions that do not work anymore – they worked once, but that time has passed. But some of our sacred cows actually have the ability to carry us away from God. And in those unexamined actions we begin to commit the sins of Ahab.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Kings 17

Note: The VantagePoint Community Church (Edmonton) message "We Are the Church" is now available on the VantagePoint website. You can find it here.