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The Lord Is One


Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

          This is the first part of what is known as the Shema. Some Jews say it as a prayer on a daily basis. Jesus quoted part of it in His answer to the question of what the greatest commandment is. 
          This is really an amazing statement. Whatever the religions of the times before the Exodus, by the time of the Exodus, lots of groups had multiple gods. Consider…. You get up one morning and discover that things are seriously not going your way. Which god did you upset? Does your favorite god have enough clout to get the one you’ve angered to leave you alone? How many bulls would you have to sacrifice to get back in his/her good graces? What do you do if your problems as the result of a spat between two gods? Some of the ancients included sex as part of their worship because the thought that they either have to get the gods in the mood or remind the gods about what they needed the gods to do (because somehow, the spring rains were associated with divine copulation.) I can’t say I’d be impressed with deities that needed reminders in that department. Multiply that to the point where you have two hundred million gods on whose good side you need to remain.
          Imagine some of the problems with competitions between the gods. This god wants his people to be better than that god’s people, and the race-race is on! Can any situation involving multiple gods turn out well? It would not seem so. The Greeks and Romans, at least, solved this problem by having their gods really not have much to do with daily life.
          How much easier it is to deal with just one God. Granted, if you anger Him, you don’t have anyone else to whom to turn, but with God, you know where you stand.

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