THE TRIVIALIZATION OF GOD

"It may well be that the worst sin of the church at the end of the twentieth century has been the trivialization of God." So wrote Donald McCullough in his 1995 book, The Trivialization of God.

I agree.   

Trivialization occurs when people or things are made to seem less important than they really are. Mean spiritedness and/or ignorance are usually behind it, and it is wicked. But this wickedness defies description when it is directed towards God and that which pertains to Him—God, Who is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent and perfect in all His ways; God, Who is “greatly to be praised,” Whose “greatness is unsearchable,” and Who is the God “with Whom we have to do” (Ps. 145:3; Heb.  4:13).

The ongoing attempts to trivialize God by those who are “alienated from God in their minds” (Col. 1:21) to Him constitute incomprehensible foolishness and insolence, but this is to be expected of the citizens of this lost world that  “lieth in wickedness” (1 John 5:19). What shouldn’t be expected or accepted is that the monstrous evil of trivializing God would be augmented, aided and abetted by those who claim to be the “sheep of His pasture” and to “worship Him in Spirit and in truth” (Ps. 107:2;  John 4:24).

We are living in times when, with shrinking exceptions, the trivialization of God is practiced, accepted and applauded by professed Christianity in ways that range from the subtle to the sensational, it seems practically programmed into churches, many of which identify as conservative, Bible-believing, etc. It is discernible to ears and eyes that haven’t become too spiritually dull and dim to notice; discernible in the lightness, carnality and shallowness that comes from pulpits (Jer.. 23), from choirs, and in the general spiritual irrelevance of church activity.”

The trend to trivializing God can be corrected by a reexamination by individual Christians and Church leaders of their concept of God. What people engage in and enjoy where worship and service are concerned today leaves a lot alarmingly in question as to the concept they have of God. He is a God to be feared and not fooled with; a God to be worshipped and not worked somewhere into religious agendas. A revival of reverential “fear of God” is desperately needed today, along with a spirituality that says, “O magnify the LORD with me, And let us exalt his name together  (Ecc. 12:13; Ps. 34:33).”