Before you say "no!" in response to the title of this article, and turn the page, you might consider the definition of the word worship. To worship means "to show religious devotion or reverence for; adore or venerate as a deity" The Christian Scientist thinks of God as infinite, all-powerful Spirit, as divine Mind. This is the one God, which he or she worships with reverence and devotion. But a dictionary definition of god with a lowercase "g" reads, "a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require man's worship." Perhaps without realizing it, we've been worshiping a so-called god apart from the one God, engaging in a form of idolatry.
Throughout the centuries people have worshiped God, Spirit, and unfortunately, at the same time, worshiped other "gods." And this is the case today. Wherever we turn, and certainly in the media, the notion of another god is being promoted —that of a corporeal personality, a physical body, that needs our constant attention. We are told that we need to take extra good care of this corporeality, or self, through diet and exercise; that we can improve this self through psychology and self-help methods; that we need to pamper the self with things! When we accept these claims as true, and act on them, we bow down to a personal, materialistic sense of ourselves. In effect, we worship what we might call the "mortal me god."
Now, you might say: "I don't worship myself. In fact, I have a very low opinion of myself." Or you might say, "I don't worship myself, but I do like and have a healthy respect for myself." While we should certainly value all that's truly good about ourselves, all that originates in God, the attitudes referred to are two sides of the same coin if we're taking a mortal, material view of ourselves. Both are inaccurate from a spiritual standpoint, which reveals man as the perfect, incorporeal image and likeness of God, as the Bible teaches.
