Whom do we first trust? Whom are we first loyal to? Ordinary human faith generally begins with our relationship in infancy with our parents. If our parents live in faithful relationship with us, we begin to learn very early how to trust. Even before we are conscious, or able to speak, we begin to imagine,through their dependable care for us, what the world is like and whether it can be our home.
As we grow, and form a bond with our parents of mutual trust and loyalty, we begin to understand their way of seeing and being in the world, their loyalties. They bring to us the shared family stories and values. And, "they bring their fidelities - and infidelities - to other persons and to the causes, institutions, and transcending centers of value and power that constitute their lives' meanings." (Fowler) Parents and children form a covenant, a commitment, to each other of trust, loyalty, faithfulness, and shared values.
If we do not form such relationships with our parents, if we are wise, we will find others whom we can form these kinds of faith-filled relationships with, others who can mother and father us into rich and fulfilling life, nurture us into believing in ourselves and valuing commitment and loyal love.
Hopefully, we will form many such faith-filled, covenantal relationships in our lives, with other people, with communities, with places of work and recreation, with institutions. Each covenantal relationship causes us to grow, to change, to expand our understandings of faith and love, to deepen our trust and our values.
Or, sadly, if we are wounded people, we can pledge allegiance to relationships, groups, or causes which cause our concepts of faith-filled relationship to be damaged or shrink, or which infect our values, or cause us to selfishly turn our loyalty in upon only our own group. We can choose a loyalty to a manipulative source of power. We can choose to hope in and work for, with others , in a twisted or flawed cause.
The relationships we choose to be faithful to profoundly impact our lives, for good or for ill. "In each of the roles we play, in each significant relationship we have with others, in each institution of which we are a part, we are linked to others in shared trusts and loyalties to centers of value and power. In each of these contexts, we serve common goals, we hold shared meanings, we remember shared stories, we celebrate and renew common hopes." (Fowler).
Our patriotism to our country and our country's government's pledge to its people to govern for the common good is a covenant of faith. "A nation-state, at least insofar as it can rightfully claim the name ' democratic republic,' is a covenantal community. Though we may never know personally more than a few hundred of our fellow citizens, we are bound together in a degree of shared identity and shared loyalty by virtue of our common allegiance to the nation and to its foundational values of justice, order, freedom, and the common good."
When we really think carefully about the multitude of roles and multitude of covenantal relationships that we have, we have a challenge before us. How can our identity and our religious faith bring these diverse roles, relationships, and meanings into an integrated, workable unity in and for us? If we believe in an infinite God, "an infinite source and center of value and power," (Fowler) our covenant relationship with our God is our primary covenantal relationship. God is the primary One, our Primary Lover, in Whom we believe. God is the primary Person Whom we trust; we commit ourselves to and our hearts rest upon God, first and foremost. All other covenantal relationships that we have are ordered to and centered on this primary religious faith relationship. Our infinite God is our one and only God.
God is infinite, everlasting. God is our supreme Value, our treasure; God is also the One Who gives eternal value to our lives. God is supreme Power; and God, living within us, gives our lives the power of love, healing, humility, mercy, and fidelity. All of our other covenantal relationships are finite. They will end. Their value and power is limited because they are developed between finite human beings or created by finite human beings.
But, practically, realistically speaking, even if we say that our God is our one God, and our relationship with Him is our primary relationship, life doesn't always work out that way. Idolatry, worshipping a false god or gods, can easily sneak its way into our hearts and our ways of thinking. "Real idolatry, in the Jewish and Christian traditions, does not have to do with the worship of statues or pagan altars. Idolatry is rather the profoundly serious business of committing oneself or betting one's life on finite centers of value and power as the source of one's (or one's group's) confirmation of worth and meaning, and as the guarantor of survival with quality." (Fowler).
At some level, we all tend to be polytheists, to worship others besides or instead of the one God. Our culture encourages polytheism because our culture does not value covenantal commitment or loyalty or trust. Some people can never seem to commit to any one relationship or group or cause or to a faith or a faith community. They are commitment-phobic. So they treat life and relationships like a grand buffet, there for their transient pleasure and fulfillment. They "worship" who or what they "love" at that moment. Consumerism becomes the main false god, surrounded by the many lesser gods of the Latest - Whatever. "The practical impact of our consumer society's dominant myth - that you should experience everything you desire, own everything you want, and relate intimately with whomever you wish - is to make the polytheistic pattern...seem normative (normal)." (Fowler).
Some people can be polytheists because they say they worship the One, infinite God, but, alongside God, they worship the false gods of money, power, ambition, or prestige. The business owner who is so intent on making money that he does not work for the common good of his staff and customers, is a polytheist. The politician who says she believes in the one infinite God but who does not keep faithful covenant with her constituents and their common good but instead worships personal ambition and political power, is a polytheist. Even the dedicated Doctor or lawyer or Church minister who spends a major portion of time dedicated to the "cause" of his/her profession and neglects covenant relationships with family is a polytheist because his or her life is not in covenantal balance.
Without even realizing it, we can mentally and emotionally elevate a person or a group or a cause into a personal or tribal god. When does this happen? When the person, group, or cause becomes more important to us than the infinite God. When that person's, group's, or cause's ideas of truth or justice or wisdom or even love is elevated to more importance to our psyches than the Word of our infinite God and God's priorities.
In our nation, idolatry can happen when one's adherence or belonging to one political party and its platform, which is a finite center of power and value, becomes more important than seeking which parts of each party's platform adhere to God's commands, and which do not. The particular party has become the tribal god, worshipped instead of the infinite God of Truth Who demands respect for all life, from birth to death, including the unborn, the rich, middle class, and poor, the physically and mentally disabled, the addicted, the elderly, the dying, the homeless, the stranger, the prisoner, the immigrant, the person of a different skin color or language or religion or sexual orientation, and respect for the earth, our common home. There is no either/or for God. God considers all of His/ Her children, having eternal value and worth. Our government is in a covenant relationship with all of us; one group should never receive preferential treatment over another, neither in budgets nor in health care plans.
"'I desire mercy, not sacrifice'," says Jesus, quoting the prophet Hosea. God wants us to worship Him from the heart, to care for His people and all His creation with merciful, faithful hearts. God values our personal, covenantal relationships of love and caring over blind adherence to party lines and blind sacrifices of self on the party altar. God's ultimate value - which He enjoins upon us - is our covenantal commitment to the universal human family, His children, rather than blind adherence to an America which has become a tribal god which we are commanded to put first.
Once again, there is no either/or for God. No preferred nation, no preferred race, no preferred culture, no preferred language. In God's eyes, we are all God's own and we are all one. God expects us and inspires us to grow in this universal, inclusive vision and understanding. "If we regard the future of mankind as requiring our learning to live in an inclusive, global community, then in a sense radical monotheistic faith depicts the form of our universal 'coming faith.'" (Fowler).
Even in our faith communities, we can mistakenly consider our priest or minister or even the community itself as having ultimate value and meaning when they are only representations of the infinite God Whom we worship and serve. We truly idolize them instead of God. We can see this unconscious idolatry in the persons who leave the Catholic Church because their parish has closed. That parish was not God, and it was only a small portion of the whole, international Church community, but emotionally its value had transcended the value of the Church and even God for those persons. When parishioners travel from parish to parish to "follow" a priest or minister, we can hope and pray that God and the complete Church community are the supreme value for these people instead of a very human minister of God's Word.
In prayer, in front of God, honestly and humbly, it's good to review our relationships with ourselves, our family, our job or profession, our relatives, our friends, our political and recreational affiliations, our causes we espouse. How do these covenant relationships "sit" with God's Word, with the teachings of our Church? Do we take the time to be silent with God, to lean on God's shoulder, to experience God's tender, all-encompassing love, so that we won't be seduced or conned into betraying our primary relationship with God, and the other main covenant relationships/vocations in our lives?
Are we true, radical monotheists? Do we view faith covenant relationships through the mind and heart of our Father of All, our humble Christ, and our Holy Spirit, Who will always remind us that our God desires mercy rather than the sacrifice of our principles and values and commitments on some false god's altar?