Print
A Culture That Serves God… Or One That Bows Before Money… Power… And Whatever Feels Good?
Want A Better World? Let’s Start With Our Own Garages… And The “Idols” That Are Piling Up There
Picture a fellow standing beside his country mailbox, studying the neighbor’s place. He sees weeds along the fence, a sagging gate, and junk behind the shed, and he’s got plenty to say about how somebody ought to clean things up.
Meanwhile, his own garage is so packed with rubbish he hasn’t parked a truck inside it since the first Obama administration. But that’s different, he figures. He knows where his junk came from.
That’s a pretty good picture of a temptation facing American Christians as 2026 heads toward 2027. We can recognize a threatening religion halfway around the world while overlooking the little gods we’ve made comfortable beside our own recliners.
And the gods we recognize least may be the ones receiving most of our obedience.
They Need To Assimilate… But Into What?
Scroll through the immigration arguments on social media, and sooner or later the concern moves beyond borders and paperwork. People worry about what newcomers believe, what customs they bring, and whether they’ll accept the obligations of living here.
Those are questions a country can reasonably discuss. Shared language, respect for law, and the ability to live peaceably with neighbors matter.
But Christians ought to ask another question before the conversation ends: What, exactly, are we inviting people to become?
Are we asking them to join communities marked by honest work, faithful marriages, truthful speech, and responsibility before God? Or are we inviting them into a culture where money sets the rules, politics excuses dishonesty, entertainment raises the children, and personal desire gets the final vote?
Assimilation into a sick household doesn’t automatically make anybody healthy. Sometimes it simply teaches the newcomer where the family keeps its liquor.
Besides, “immigrant” isn’t a religion. Some newcomers are Christians whose faith might embarrass the comfortable Americans demanding that they fit in.
The Gods Don’t Always Have Foreign Names
In his lecture Polytheistic Salvation, R. J. Rushdoony pressed an uncomfortable argument: Christians can profess belief in one God while dividing their lives among competing authorities they treat as ultimate.
Strictly speaking, polytheism means belief in or worship of many gods. Rushdoony’s application reaches into practical allegiance—living as though different powers possess different territories where God has no authority.
God gets the church service. Money gets the business decisions. The party gets the conscience. Appetite gets the bedroom. And the government gets whatever responsibility the family would rather surrender.
Nobody puts little statues on the mantel. We simply arrange our lives as though the Lord has jurisdiction over hymns and funerals, while somebody else writes the rules for everything important.
That arrangement should sound familiar to anybody who has ever heard, “Well, that’s fine for Sunday, but this is business.”
Which raises an awkward question: Who becomes lord when Monday morning arrives?
An American Passport Won’t Frighten An Idol
The Bible doesn’t restrict idolatry to carved figures in distant temples. In Colossians 3:5, Paul identifies covetousness as idolatry.
That brings the subject considerably closer to the kitchen table. A man can condemn somebody else’s shrine while organizing his entire existence around a bigger account balance, a newer truck, and the pleasure of being envied.
Jesus likewise said we cannot serve both God and mammon. The issue in Matthew 6:24 is service: which master receives our loyalty when their demands collide?
Making money isn’t the same as worshiping it. But when keeping the sale requires a lie, and the lie wins, we’ve learned something about who gives the orders.
The same test applies to political loyalty. When we condemn dishonesty in the other party but excuse it in ours, we’re granting our side an exemption from God’s standards.
An idol doesn’t become harmless because it knows the Pledge of Allegiance.
When Winning Becomes A Religion
One of Rushdoony’s sharpest warnings concerns what happens when power becomes more important than truth. Without a standard above the competing camps, public life becomes a struggle over who can force whom to submit.
Christians participate in that arrangement whenever we decide our people must win at any moral cost. Suddenly, a commandment becomes negotiable because the election is important.
But elections are always important. There’s always another emergency, another enemy, another reason the usual rules supposedly cannot apply.
Before long, the politician who was hired to perform a limited public duty has become the man expected to rescue civilization. His supporters defend things they would punish their children for doing.
That’s an enormous spiritual promotion for somebody whose campaign keeps asking us for twenty dollars.
Government has legitimate work to do. But when we expect it to supply ultimate security, define good and evil, and save us from the consequences of our own unfaithfulness, we’re asking a public institution to fill God’s shoes.
Our Newest Oracle Fits In A Pocket
Bring this into 2026–2027, and another temptation sits glowing beside the coffee cup. We can consult a screen about almost anything while neglecting the patient work of learning how to judge.
Artificial intelligence can help with useful tasks. Yet the temptation is to treat a confident answer as final authority because it arrives quickly and sounds informed.
The same surrender happens when an online personality becomes our appointed interpreter of everything. If he says the neighbor is an enemy, we believe him; if he shares an accusation, we pass it along before checking.
Now a stranger with a microphone has more influence over our treatment of people than the commandment against bearing false witness.
The device itself isn’t the idol. The surrender of judgment, obedience, and trust is where the trouble begins.
A useful servant becomes a dangerous master when we stop asking whether it tells the truth.
A Church Can Help Build The Fence Around God
Here’s where Rushdoony’s argument walks through the church doors.
A congregation can preach personal salvation while quietly teaching that Christ has little to say about contracts, education, public justice, household obligations, or the treatment of employees. Faith becomes an inward experience with a weekly meeting attached.
Yet 1 Corinthians 10:31 brings even eating and drinking under the obligation to glorify God. If lunch belongs to Him, it’s difficult to explain why the family business doesn’t.
That doesn’t turn the pastor into the county sheriff. It means neither the pastor nor the sheriff possesses an exemption from moral accountability.
A church that never challenges its members’ profitable sins may leave them feeling wonderfully spiritual. It may also help them maintain separate lives: one under Christ’s name and another under somebody else’s instructions.
The sermon ends. The other masters take over.
Clean Out Your Own Garage
Dostoevsky gives us a fitting reminder through Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov: “Each of you keep watch over your heart and confess your sins to yourself unceasingly.” That’s a good deal harder than keeping watch over everybody else’s immigration status.
Put it in country language: before delivering another speech about the neighbor’s mess, open your own garage.
Jesus made the point with a beam and a speck in Matthew 7:3–5. He required self-examination so that we could see clearly enough to help somebody else.
We don’t need to become flawless before discussing public problems. We do need to stop using public problems as a hiding place from private repentance.
The foreigner down the road didn’t make me dishonest. He didn’t make me neglect my children, worship comfort, excuse my favorite politician, or spend an evening feeding resentment through a screen.
Those chores belong on my side of the fence.
Even The Homestead Can Become A Shrine
And yes, this warning reaches the off-grid crowd.
Stored food, a productive garden, dependable water, and backup power are sensible provisions. But preparedness can become an attempt to purchase the certainty that belongs to God alone.
We can stack supplies until there’s barely room to walk and still have no patience, generosity, or peace. We can become so determined never to need anybody that we forget our duty to love anybody.
The test comes when stewardship costs us something. Can we share, tell the truth, admit dependence, and help a neighbor without calculating every possible advantage?
A full pantry is a blessing. It makes a poor savior.
The First Altar To Come Down
If we want newcomers to encounter a Christian culture, we ought to give them something recognizably Christian to encounter. Let them find households that keep promises, employers who pay honestly, churches that care for their people, and neighbors whose kindness survives disagreement.
That work can begin before another election or immigration argument is settled. It begins wherever our obedience has been divided.
So, heading into 2027, discuss borders, law, and assimilation seriously. Then ask which powers have already crossed the borders of your own conscience and started issuing commands.
Some of the gods we should fear most speak perfect English. We raised them here, paid their expenses, and taught our children to admire them.
Before pointing toward the stranger’s altar, we’d better take a hammer to our own.
