For those us who do not know the first of these ten, here is a refresher from Exodus 20:
Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
Peter Rollins pointed out that the first of the 10 commandments can be read at least two ways. The first way to read this is as the people should not have any gods in the presence of the living God. It is interpreted as a directive as abolishing any other god from our lives.
However, there is another way to read this commandment: You can have other gods, but they shall not come first.
In this way the commandment suggests, “you can have other gods but they have to stand behind the living God. In this way we shall worship no other gods before the living God.”
In practice, the more we worship something the more we draw closer to that thing, just take a standard Christian worship service. The hope in this setting is that we would draw close to God in our worship. The one who worships and draws close to the living God will begin to see only God. That is how worship “works” and changes our lives.
Drawing close to that which is worshiped not only gives us the eyes to see, but it also blinds us to anything outside of the object of worship. For instance, if we worship fame and celebrity, we will begin to look at what can bring us those thing while ignoring (become blind) to the things that imped the fame and celebrity status we worship.
God knows we are driven to worship and that we often choose idols that lead us to death. And no matter how hard we try, even the most devout person will be temped by idols. God’s wisdom and cleverness shines through by saying in this commandment - “Look, I know you are not going to give up your idols, in fact you can keep all your other “gods”, they do not bother me, but do not have those gods before me. Worship me first.” And when we worship God first, when we draw close to God, then even if there are other idols we will be unable to see them and worship them.
Every parent knows this when it comes to feeding children. Parents know that kids will usually always be tempted to eat desert. Some parents might say, “before you eat desert eat your healthy dinner first and then wait ten minutes.” In this way, the child is likely to eat less desert since they are full from the meal or they have forgotten after ten minutes. Other parents make the prohibition of not eating any desert at all. And, if the Bible has taught us anything it is that the prohibition actually generates additional desire for the thing that is off limits. One might imagine we would be in a different place if God said, “Adam/Eve, you are free to eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, but before you do, you must first eat from every other tree.”
Maybe since the misstep with Adam and Eve, God pivoted and said, “you shall have no other gods before me.”
Now, it is our turn to pivot our worshiping habits.