Here’s something that should unsettle every serious Christian: the church in the West today looks remarkably like ancient Israel at its worst. Not because we’ve abandoned God outright, but because we’ve reduced Him. We’ve given Him a department instead of the throne. And that, according to Judges 6, is precisely the problem.
What Baal and Asherah Actually Offered
When the prophet indicted Israel in Judges 6, the charge was specific: you have feared the gods of the Amorites. Chief among them were Baal and Asherah.
Now, the Bible storybook version of idolatry is a simpleton bowing before a lump of rock. But that’s a caricature. These people weren’t stupid, they acted in terms of incentives, and the incentives were clear.
Asherah offered fertility — bread, stable harvests, economic security. Baal, the male energy offered military might, protection against invasion. If you did the right rituals at the local shrine, your crops would come in and your family would grow. These weren’t exotic, irrational cults, they were the established system people trusted for daily bread.
And here’s what most Christians miss: Israel didn’t reject Jehovah for Baal, they incorporated Jehovah into the Baal-Asherah system. Stephen Perks called it the “Baal-Jehovah cult.” They kept the name, they kept the festivals, they still went to the tabernacle. But they carved God out a department; ritual, worship, the sacred, and left everything else to the local powers.
The problem is that you cannot take a slice of an absolute God and still have that God. A jealous God demands totality. Reduce Him and you don’t get a smaller version of the real thing, you get an idol wearing His name.
The Modern Version of the Baal-Jehovah Cult
Now ask yourself where this leaves the average evangelical church in the West.
What does God have jurisdiction over? Salvation. Sunday worship. Personal devotion. Maybe marriage, if pressed. What about economics? “That’s the prosperity gospel — we don’t touch that.” What about national governance? “Don’t mix religion with politics.” What about education, law, defence, public health? “Those are secular concerns.”
In other words: Jehovah gets the temple, the state gets everything else. And we call this “orthodoxy.”
But it’s not orthodoxy. It’s the Baal-Jehovah cult with better music. We’ve assigned God a realm; the spiritual, the private, the ritual, and handed the rest to whatever local power promises to provide. We have retired Him, and given Him a granny flat to live in, and given the state the throne room in His place. The state provides employment, healthcare, pensions, security – and we trust it to do so with a fervour that would make a Baal worshipper blush.
Meanwhile, Baal’s and Asherah’s promises turned out to be hollow. Israel worshipped the fertility-god and got “very great impoverishment,” empty bellies. They allied with the war-god and got defeated. On both counts, the false gods failed to deliver. And if you look at the state of Western nations today; the impoverishment, the insecurity, the crumbling institutions – the parallels are hard to ignore.
Chaos as Religion
There’s another dimension to Baal worship that connects directly to our moment. The ancients believed that chaos was ultimate — that when society needed renewal, you had a ritual return to chaos. Overturn norms, shed blood, start again.
This is the religious engine behind Marxism. Revolution wasn’t an unfortunate side effect, it was a religious necessity. If bloodshed didn’t happen naturally, it had to be engineered. And this is exactly what we see in queer theory today: constant revolution in the sexual arena. Each new identity is yesterday’s orthodoxy waiting to be overthrown, not because it makes rational sense, but because the underlying creed says “chaos is the foundation of cultural revival-energy comes.”
It’s the (second?) oldest religion in the world wearing a new face. And the church, by retreating to its assigned department; ritual, worship, the private heart, has no framework to even name it, let alone confront it.
God’s Claims Are Total
The Jehovah of scripture is not a departmental ‘god.’ Through His word and law, He claims universal jurisdiction; over individuals, families, churches, businesses, and nations. The promise of the covenant is not just heaven when you die. It’s prosperity and security on earth for those who obey, and judgement for those who don’t. That theme runs from Genesis to Revelation and it has not been rescinded.
Christ’s authority over the nations is not diminished, it is supreme. Psalm 2, Psalm 110, the Great Commission, Peter’s declaration in Acts: all point to a Lord who rules now, over everything. To deny this and give him only the temple is not humility. It is the sin of Judges 6, wearing respectable clothes.
If we want to understand our times and lead our families faithfully through them, we have to stop running a Baal-Jehovah cult and start worshipping the total God. That starts with letting His word speak to every area of life, not just the ones we’re comfortable with.
Based on the God’s World, God’s Way podcast series through Judges 6. Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. Listen on Cr101Radio.com. Share with a brother who needs to hear this.