God Plus Nothing: The High Places We Still Keep
“No one can serve two masters.
He will either hate one and love the other,
or be devoted to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon.”
— Matthew 6:24
Over the past few weeks, the Church’s liturgy has repeatedly brought us into the books of Kings and Chronicles. At Mass, we have heard about kings rising and falling, temples being repaired, false altars being destroyed, sacred poles being cut down, and high places remaining even after periods of reform.
These readings can be difficult.
The names, kingdoms, alliances, battles, and repeated failures can feel like material for a history lesson rather than spiritual nourishment. Yet the Church does not place these passages before us merely so that we can learn the political history of ancient Israel.
The liturgy teaches us to ask a different question:
Why is this reading here today?
These accounts reveal the history of salvation. They show the mercy and patience of God. They expose recurring patterns within the human heart. They teach us how quickly a people can receive God’s gifts, forget his works, imitate the surrounding culture, and begin trusting in visible powers.
The strange gods may belong to another age, but the temptation behind them remains.
We still look for visible things that make us feel safe. We still reach for soothing mechanisms that help us feel as though we are trusting. We still use possessions, approval, success, control, pleasure, and religious performance as substitutes for surrender.
The ancient high places have not disappeared.
They have simply changed form.
Why Did Israel Keep Returning to Idols?
It is easy to imagine biblical idolatry as open hatred of God.
We picture someone consciously rejecting the Lord and choosing instead to worship a strange statue, sacred tree, or serpent.
But the reality may have been more subtle.
Many Israelites probably continued to believe in the Lord. They remembered that he had delivered their fathers from Egypt. They knew the covenant. They participated in the religious life of Israel.
But they also lived among nations that worshipped other gods.
A local shrine might promise rain.
A fertility ritual might be associated with children, livestock, or crops.
A neighboring people might claim that a certain god protected the land.
A family custom may have been practiced for generations.
The temptation was not always:
“Reject the Lord.”
It was often:
“Trust the Lord, but keep another source of security nearby.”
The people did not necessarily remove God from their lives.
They added something to him.
God and Baal.
God and Asherah.
God and the local custom.
God and the visible guarantee.
This is the religion of “just in case.”
The God-Plus Temptation
The high places represented more than incorrect religious ideas. They represented practical distrust.
The people feared drought, infertility, hunger, invasion, poverty, and death. The visible gods appeared to offer some influence over those fears.
A ritual could be performed.
An offering could be made.
A sacred site could be visited.
The worshipper could feel that something had been done to secure the desired outcome.
That is part of the attraction of idolatry: it offers a sense of control.
Trust in the living God requires surrender. An idol can be managed.
The same temptation remains today.
We may not bow before carved images, but we still construct lives based upon the formula:
God plus something else.
God plus money.
God plus control.
God plus political power.
God plus sexual attention.
God plus reputation.
God plus career success.
God plus the approval of other people.
The created thing may not be evil in itself. Money, work, relationships, planning, and responsibility can all be good.
The problem begins when one of them becomes the thing we believe we cannot live without.
The idol is often whatever we need in order to feel safe enough to trust God.
“You Cannot Serve God and Mammon”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus reveals the impossibility of divided worship:
“No one can serve two masters.”
He does not say that serving two masters is difficult.
He says it cannot be done.
Eventually, one master will command our deepest loyalty.
Christ identifies mammon as one of God’s great rivals. Mammon is more than currency. It is wealth treated as security, independence, power, and proof that life will remain under our control.
This is why the prosperity gospel can become a modern high place.
Its message may appear Christian:
Pray this way.
Give this amount.
Claim this promise.
Demonstrate enough faith.
Then God will provide success, health, wealth, protection, or victory.
The language is Christian, but the hidden purpose can remain the same as that of ancient fertility religion:
How can I secure the outcome I want?
Faith becomes a mechanism.
I perform the proper spiritual action, and God must produce the desired result.
I do this.
God does that.
The relationship becomes transactional.
God is no longer received as the supreme good. He becomes the means through which we obtain some other blessing.
From “What Do I Get?” to “Whom Else Shall We Go To?”
Many of us begin approaching God because we need something.
We need healing.
We need peace.
We need help with our families.
We need employment, protection, forgiveness, or direction.
These are not necessarily selfish or wicked requests. Christ himself teaches us to ask, seek, and knock. Throughout the Gospels, people come to him because they are sick, hungry, frightened, grieving, or desperate.
God receives us in our need.
But Christian formation cannot stop at:
“What can God give me?”
The Lord gradually leads the soul toward a deeper question:
“Do I desire God himself?”
Peter once asked Jesus what the disciples would receive because they had left everything to follow him. Christ did not condemn the question. But Peter’s faith would eventually mature into the confession:
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
At first, we may follow because we want what Christ can provide.
Over time, grace teaches us to remain because there is nowhere else—and no one else—we truly desire.
The Cross Breaks the Transaction
The Cross stands against every attempt to reduce faith to a predictable exchange.
Jesus is perfectly obedient.
He is perfectly faithful.
He is perfectly loved by the Father.
Yet he is betrayed, rejected, stripped, wounded, and crucified.
If earthly success were the reliable proof of divine favor, the Cross would appear to be a failure.
Instead, the Cross is the fullest revelation of divine love.
It teaches us that faithfulness does not always produce comfort.
Obedience does not always lead to immediate success.
Prayer does not always remove suffering.
But none of these realities means that God has ceased to be faithful.
The Christian does not trust because every event feels good.
The Christian trusts because God has revealed who he is in Jesus Christ.
Fatherhood and the High Place of Control
This Gospel also speaks directly to fatherhood.
A father wants to provide. He wants his family protected, stable, disciplined, and secure. He wants to shield his children from suffering and prepare them for life.
These desires are good.
But even good responsibilities can become false masters.
A father may begin believing:
Everything depends upon me.
I must prevent every problem.
I must control every outcome.
If my child struggles, I have failed.
If the household becomes disordered, I must force it back into order.
If I cannot fix this situation, then I have no value.
Responsibility slowly becomes control.
Control then becomes the soothing mechanism that allows us to feel safe.
We may call it leadership, discipline, preparation, or concern. But underneath it can be the belief that we cannot trust God unless we are first able to guarantee the result.
Jesus does not command fathers to become passive.
A Christian father still works, provides, plans, teaches, protects, corrects, and sacrifices.
But he must also remember:
“Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.”
A father is responsible for faithfulness.
He is not sovereign over outcomes.
That distinction is difficult, but it is freeing.
We plant.
We water.
We teach.
We correct.
We remain present.
Then we entrust the growth to God.
The Soothing Mechanisms We Mistake for Trust
Ancient idols gave people something visible to touch, visit, offer to, and rely upon.
Modern idols often perform the same function emotionally.
They soothe us.
Money tells us that tomorrow will be manageable.
Control tells us that nothing unexpected will happen.
Approval tells us that we are acceptable.
Pleasure tells us that pain can be escaped.
Anger tells us that we are powerful.
Political influence tells us that truth will survive because our side is winning.
Religious performance tells us that God must be pleased because we completed the proper actions.
These things may temporarily calm our fears.
But relief is not always trust.
Sometimes the thing helping us “trust God” is actually the thing preventing us from trusting him.
We believe we are resting in providence, but only because the bank account is comfortable.
We believe we have peace, but only because the plan is working.
We believe we have surrendered, but only because the outcome still appears controllable.
The high place is revealed when the soothing mechanism is threatened.
What happens when the money is uncertain?
When the child does not respond?
When the plan fails?
When other people misunderstand us?
When prayer does not produce the answer we expected?
That moment reveals which master we were truly serving.
Why the Kings Keep Removing the High Places
The good kings in Chronicles are often remembered for destroying what previous generations had tolerated.
They broke the pillars.
They cut down the sacred poles.
They removed the altars.
They cleansed the Temple.
These physical acts reveal an interior necessity.
The high places had become normal. They were part of the landscape. People may no longer have recognized them as acts of rebellion.
That is also how interior idols survive.
They become ordinary.
We call them personality, preference, prudence, culture, ambition, responsibility, or self-care.
Some of these things may truly be good. But every habit must still be brought under the judgment of Christ.
Formation requires asking:
What have I accepted as normal that quietly competes with God?
What result have I made a condition of trust?
What created thing must remain in place before I can feel secure?
What am I afraid God will ask me to surrender?
What do I reach for before I reach for him?
Seek First the Kingdom
After warning his disciples about mammon, Jesus speaks about food, clothing, tomorrow, and anxiety.
He points to the birds of the air and the flowers of the field.
He is not teaching irresponsibility.
He is revealing the Father.
The Christian is not asked to pretend that material needs do not exist. We are asked to remember that these needs are already known by God.
“Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.”
Then Christ gives us the proper order:
“Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.”
This is not a prosperity formula.
It does not mean that if we seek God correctly, we will receive every earthly result we desire.
It means that when God is first, everything else can be received according to its proper value.
Work remains work.
Money remains money.
Success remains success.
Fatherhood remains a vocation rather than a demand to control.
Created things become gifts rather than gods.
God Plus Nothing
The books of Kings and Chronicles are not simply records of ancient failure.
They show the history of a patient God forming a stubborn people.
He warns them.
He sends prophets.
He permits consequences.
He raises reformers.
He restores worship.
He continues calling his people back after they have again treated him as insufficient.
This history reaches its fulfillment in Christ.
Jesus does not merely remove one idol from among many. He asks for the whole heart.
He does not come to become another source of comfort within an already crowded life.
He comes as Lord.
Wednesday formation begins here:
Not merely by asking which ancient gods Israel worshipped, but by asking which high places still remain within us.
Not merely by condemning their distrust, but by recognizing our own.
Not merely by learning history, but by allowing salvation history to expose the present heart.
The ancient temptation remains:
Trust God, but keep something else nearby.
The Gospel answers:
“No one can serve two masters.”
We cannot give God first place while preserving another final source of security.
The work of formation is therefore the gradual surrender of every “God plus.”
God plus money.
God plus control.
God plus approval.
God plus success.
God plus the guarantee that everything will turn out according to our plans.
Christ calls us toward something simpler and more demanding:
God plus nothing.
Not because his gifts are unimportant.
Not because our needs are imaginary.
Not because fathers should cease working or providing.
But because every good thing comes from him, remains beneath him, and must never replace him.
Questions for Reflection
What visible thing helps me feel safe enough to trust God?
What happens within me when that source of comfort is threatened?
Have I confused responsibility with control?
Do I treat prayer as communion with God or as a method for obtaining results?
What “God plus” formula still operates in my life?
What high place has become so ordinary that I no longer recognize it?
Can I receive God himself as the gift before my circumstances change?
Prayer
Heavenly Father,
you know what we need before we ask.
Forgive us for treating you as one source of security among many. Reveal the high places we have accepted within our hearts. Show us the visible things, soothing mechanisms, and hidden conditions that keep us from trusting you completely.
Teach us to work without worshipping control, to provide without becoming enslaved by fear, and to pray without bargaining.
Give fathers the grace to lead faithfully while entrusting their families to your providence. Help us to plant, teach, correct, protect, and remain present without believing that every outcome depends upon us.
When our plans fail, remain our peace.
When our security is shaken, remain our foundation.
When your gifts are hidden, teach us to desire the Giver.
May we seek first your Kingdom, serve you without divided hearts, and trust that you alone are enough.
Amen.