“If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart,” says the prophet Samuel to the house of Israel, “then put away the foreign gods and the Ashteroth from among you, and direct your heart to the Lord, and serve him only, and he will deliver you …” (7:3).

The situation is this: The Israelites have entered the promised land of Canaan where they live in an uneasy accommodation with the Canaanites. Because the Israelites have a heritage of tending flocks instead of growing crops, they have copied the lifestyle of the Canaanites in order to make a success of the agricultural potential in their new home.

In all probability, neither the Canaanites nor the Israelites are a strong political presence at this point, but it is an uneasy relationship.

The Israelites not only have copied the agricultural techniques of the Canaanites, but they have also adopted some of the religious practices that appear to be part of the Canaanites’ agricultural prosperity. These practices revolve around the worship rites of the Ashteroth and the Baals, local fertility gods and goddesses of Canaan.

The Israelites probably did not think that they were forsaking their God; they were just going along with what seemed to work well. All at once, then, this ancient story becomes our story, as well.

The Israelites must have been shocked to be accused of forsaking the Lord – a pattern repeated over and over in the Old Testament. To secure their success, the people of Israel adopt the ways of their pagan enemies, without realizing they have forsaken God.

Culture accumulates in the life of religious people and chokes off the life-giving arteries of their faith. This happens in our time as well; religious people adopt values and practices coming from the current culture, not from God. Worst of all, we are blissfully unaware that culture has taken over.

What is Christian?

We defend these incursions as part of our religious faith. How incredible that we fail to realize that these values and practices are contrary to that faith.

The bloody Crusades were cultural, not spiritual. The Inquisition had nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The decimation of the Native Americans was attributable to greed and racial prejudice, not the teachings of Christ.

As a schoolboy I believed the Spanish American War was for the humanitarian purpose of freeing Cubans and Filipinos from Spanish barbarity. Today, historians have exposed the militant colonialism that self-righteously swept our country under the banner of Manifest Destiny – the conviction that God called America to join the colonial powers for territorial expansion.

I do not believe that as “one nation under God,” we have acknowledged a level of policy and practice that would today be labeled as “war crimes.” I have chosen the Spanish-American War as but just one of many examples of nominal Christian nations’ unrepentant guilty acts contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

(For information on the Spanish-American War and its consequences, see Honor In The Dust by Gregg Jones, New American Library, 2012.)

The challenge that came to the Israelites was unequivocal: “If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashteroth from among you …”

The choice was clear: You cannot serve God and the Baals. I think the same choice is given to us today: you cannot serve God and immerse yourself in the materialistic, nihilistic culture that too many identify as either inevitable, the will of God or both.

R. Scott Sullender says that “being a Christian or walking in Jesus’ way is really countercultural. Most of the world is going that way … and you are going this way.” That’s what we are called to do and be: A different way.

What God required of the Israelites – and what He requires of us – is not just an acknowledgement of our sin, but a different direction. The people of Israel were to show their repentance by giving up the Ashteroths and Baals, but what change in our course does God require of us? If we repent of our sins before God, what does He want of us?

Words alone will not do it. As Dallas Willard has put it, “to believe something is to act as if it is so.” If we come to realize that we put our society before His kingdom, our culture before the Gospel, we need to discern the Baals and Ashteroths that have become part of our lives and give them up.

The call to repentance comes on two levels. God through Samuel is speaking to the whole people of Israel. But there is also a personal level. Each person must also examine his or her heart to challenge the idolatry that has been unrecognized.

Our tendency is to do what “everyone else” is doing. Have you ever noticed that people in a group will often be party to sins they would not commit by themselves? Commenting on 1 Sam. 7, John G. Schroeder says, “Idolatry may be defined as intellectually and morally blind worship of the creature instead of the Creator. The reason why nations are not repentant is this fact of idolatry.”

This is true of both the nation and the individual. If you are truly “returning to the Lord with all your heart,” then what is it you must “put away” in order “to serve Him only?”

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Rev. Althouse may write to him in care of this publication.