Emerson Meets Worship Meets Soy Milk

In response to yesterday's post, my good friend and fellow Fight Club member Ben Bowman emailed me this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The gods we worship write their names on our faces, be sure of that.
And we will worship something - have no doubt of that either.
We may think that our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of the heart -
but that will out.
That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our life and character.
Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we are worshipping,
for what we are worshiping we are becoming.

We are hard-wired to worship. It is not a question of if we'll worship, but where and what. We can route our worship this way or that, but we cannot turn it off.

Emerson here echoes the Psalmist who writes about the worship of idols made of wood and stone: all who worship them will become like them--that is, dumb, mute, foolish.

Not only must we worship, we must inevitably become like that which we worship.

And so the question for all of us is one of the most important ones we can ever grapple with: what am I worshiping today? Success? Money? Security? Escape? People? Power? Applause? To be left alone? All this fights for our religious affections and worship.

But this created necessity to worship must have an appropriate outlet. We must breathe--this tells us that we were created for oxygen. We must eat--this tells us that we were created for food. To attempt to breathe soy milk would be deadly. To try to meet our hunger for food with a meal of rubber shoe soles would not be the appropriate response to the drive planted within us.

And so we were made to worship God. And to worship other things necessarily leaves us hungry, never satisfied, like drinking salt water.

What are we worshiping today? What are we becoming as a result? It will, indeed, write its name on our faces and shape our souls.