More and more people today are recognising that the word, “atheism”, is the greatest misnomer of them all. For in ‘real’ terms, all people have an object of worship. A-theism means to be ‘without God’ but an atheist is not without a God as such; he/she has simply rejected a particular God or selection of Gods.

All of us worship something. As the summer approaches, this becomes particularly evident as the oldest pagan God of them all – the sun god – rears his head and people rush to his temple.

Of course, even the most superficial analysis will reveal that what people are actually worshipping when they fry themselves in the sun of Malea and Faliraki in the summer – or in the tanning beds throughout the year in the case of especially devoted worshippers – is not so much the sun God as the gods of beauty and self. We are so desperate for adulation, so devoted to the pursuit of beauty, that we are prepared to serve the sun god in order to obtain the ‘golden’ blessing he offers.

The Bible calls such gods “idols”. Tim Keller has a very helpful explanation of how you can tell if you are worshipping an idol (as opposed to the God of the Bible): if the worship becomes mutually destructive, then the God you are serving is no true God but an idol that has enslaved you.

Reading an article about tanning in the Telegraph provided me with a poignant illustration of this mutually assured destruction and also helped me in the process to understand just how strong this idolatrous love of self is. In the words of Song of Songs 8:6, “…for love is as strong as death.”

The article (http://bit.ly/telegraph-tanning) speaks about girls who are addicted to tanning and were asked about what it would take for them to give up tanning beds, or at least reduce the number of hours they spend. The survey found that cancer was not as effective a deterrent as the risk of premature ageing.

There could not be a clearer example in modern culture of love being stronger than death. These girls would literally risk death for the sake of their God. The characteristic of worshipping an idol – a false God – is that the more devoted you are, the more your destruction is assured, usually by your own hand.

Idolatrous worship is an absolute guarantee of destruction

There is, however, a God, the worship of whom does not lead to mutually assured destruction. Devotion to him is a guarantee of safety; it is a relationship of mutually assured cultivation and blessing. He is a God whose slavery brings freedom, whose mastery brings redemption and whose death brings life. All those who trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus understand Song of Songs 8:6… but in a very different way to the modern worshippers of the sun God, Ra. They understand that love is as strong as death because it was love that prompted God the Father to send his Son to die in place of people who had rejected him. The sun God punishes those who worship him; the God of the Bible saves those who have rebelled against him.

We would be most naïve simply to assume that only young girls who go to tanning salons are enslaved to modern idols; all of us worship something. The question is not whether you believe in God… but what kind of God do you serve.