This week’s Relief Society and Elder’s Quorum lesson comes from Chapter 14, “Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me.” Your initial thought is probably similar to mine – how ridiculous! Of course I don’t worship other gods! Yet the span of this lesson does not focus on religious rituals to pagan gods, but on the worship of things other than the One, True God.
How do we show our love and devotion to the Lord? The Lord has asked us to love Him and to serve Him. We love Him by and through serving Him, and, by extension, serving others. It has been frequently said that ours is not a Sunday only religion but one that permeates our lives. We show our worship to God not only on the Sabbath, but on every other day.
False worship, then, comes from focusing the majority of our time and energy, not on Him but on other things. When we choose to put these things first, we are, in effect, saying that our devotion is more towards them than towards Heavenly Father – and “ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt 6:24). You cannot have two masters.
This week’s lesson focuses primarily on literal things of the world, but in his book, The Miracle of Forgiveness, President Kimball also notes that insubstantials can also be our false gods. Perhaps we worship at the alter of leisure time; we need to relax more than we need to home teach. Perhaps we serve the god of education – President Kimball clearly stated that young married couples who put off having a family until after their schooling is complete are in conflict with the Lord. We might even worship something that, in and of itself, is inherently good. Family, for instance. Spending time with our family is wonderful, but if we are skipping our Sunday meetings to do family activities, then even that devotion is misplaced.
In the first section of the lesson, two examples of the church taking priority over career caught my attention. The first came from President Kimball’s father, who willingly moved to accept a calling. The second was from President Kimball and himself, who put off plans to further his career to become stake president. In both cases, the father who was responsible to support his family had to make changes and trust in the Lord instead of in his own plans. This part of the lesson will engender a discussion with my husband when he returns home from work!
Of course, families need financial support and stable jobs. But we must be careful that our primary focus stays on God, and that we are not putting other things before Him. We must be certain we are not worshiping false gods, or allowing other priorities to dwarf that of our Father in Heaven.
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