Do you remember the Kellogg’s Variety Pack?  Boy, I loved those little boxes of cereal.  I loved the novelty of the different flavors, but also the novelty of the packaging — cereal in a box made for little hands!

Kellogg’s Variety Pack became my metaphor for the biblical problem of idolatry.  As an earnest Sunday School student, I noted how often the people of Israel were condemned for idolatry.  In my young mind, I thought that they were worshipping other gods because they wanted to taste what the variety pack had to offer.  I saw their idol worship as a matter of curiosity about other gods, or boredom with the God of Israel. 

For this reason, the idolatry of the people seemed to my young mind a sin of fickleness and disloyalty.  I never worried about it myself though.  We worshipped God in the big box on Sunday; I was not tempted to try any others. 

But I had it wrong.  Idolatry was not about boredom and curiosity.  It was about fear.

The ancient Israelites were not religious adventurers who wanted to taste every god on the smorgasbord.  They were people afraid that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob might not protect them from the calamities they feared.

The people of Israel, eking out a living in an arid place with absurdly thin topsoil, were constantly fretting about fertility and survival.

The Canaanite gods promised just these things: fertility of land and cattle and families.

It was fear that led the people to engage in the fertility cults of their Canaanite neighbors.  They practiced ritual prostitution and even the sacrifice of infants – all in hopes of making sure the land and cattle would be productive, that there would be prosperity or at least sufficiency.

It was fear that overwhelmed the people’s trust in the God of Israel.  It was fear that led some of them to sacrifice their children to Molech, the Canaanite fertility god.

We’re not immune to anxiety or to the idolatry that comes from it.

What fears drive us to trust in false gods?  What insecurities could lead us even to sacrifice our children?

We cling to the false security of guns even though our children are sacrificed in their classrooms and on playgrounds and on front porches.

We sacrifice the happiness and peace of our children when our anxieties prod them to mount the altar of performance and achievement in service of the great god of success.

It’s not our fickleness that leads us into idolatry, it’s fear.  And it’s not just our children who are sacrificed, either.  We sacrifice our relationships, our health and our integrity to the gods who feed on our fears.

If we could trust when we face fearful circumstances, we could come to know the blessings of the God whose rod and staff comfort us and whose presence abides with us through even the darkest valleys.

Prayer:  You are my rock and my fortress.  When the storm comes, help me hold on tighter.