It’s a short slide from warm faith to cold religiosity. The Old Testaments prophets spoke to this tendency again and again. Hosea announced, Though Ephraim built many alters for sin offerings, these have become alters for sinning.

How do we see this play out?

One example involves sexual scandals roiling our churches, where clergy or others in power prey on the young and vulnerable. Financial malfeasance also flips an alter, church leaders enriching themselves to the detriment of their congregation.

Closer to home, pride douses the fires of faith. Pride over how I get my religion right and others don’t. God surely favors my viewpoint, even if I tend to overlook a few of the finer points of the law. Hosea spoke for the Lord, I wrote for them the many things of my law, but they regarded them as something foreign.

Do we forgive? Do we show mercy? Do we castigate and malign rather than seek compassion? I know I do, and thus my alters for sin offerings devolve into alters for sinning.

May the words of Hosea and the prophets continually remind you and me of this fondness in our nature, the door behind which sin patiently waits. Don’t regard the words of God’s law as foreign, but ask the Holy Spirit to reveal their truth to you.

Lord, help me avoid the slide from a warm faith focused on You, to a cold religiosity tuned only to myself.

Hosea 8 in reading the Bible in 2023

Photo by Zoltan Tasi