The Throne

There’s always someone at the top. Someone or something we look up to, admire, venerate, in a word, worship.

In times past, it was God. Then it was Kings. Then science. Then it became something else entirely, something I can’t define despite long thought on the subject.

But there’s still something we look up to and venerate. Some ideal that we elevate above all others. Something we place on a throne.

We all need inspiration to survive. Without something inspiring to look up to and admire, perhaps to emulate, we’re lost. We search for something meaningful, and when we don’t find it, we give in to despair and unrestrained hedonism.

This is what I see happening today. We’ve given up on the Gods of our fathers, given up on royalty, given up on leadership, given up on truth itself.

So what have we got left? What keeps us going?

We still search for that meaning, that kingly ideal, that Godhead, even though most of us no longer believe in it to any meaningful degree.

We still put things, people, and ideas “on a pedestal” or lock them up in “ivory towers” that stretch above us and give us something to aspire to, something for which to hope.

For some people, it’s Democracy. For others, it’s Jihad. Others look to the state. Some still hope for the Communist Utopia. For many, it’s friends and family. For far too many, it’s mere pleasure.

But all of us look to something.

We all have some ideal that we place on a throne.

The throne is where the King sits, but more importantly than that, it’s where God sits.

We’ve been portraying our Gods as Kings for millennia, and there’s no sign of the trend coming to an end, despite the scarcity of Gods these days.

No matter what you hold to be pure and admirable and worthy of emulation, you actively worship and venerate something through your actions.

If you go to church, for example, you are worshipping God. But if you work out on a regular basis, you’re worshipping strength and health. If you make great sacrifices for your career, you’re worshipping power, status, and perhaps money. When you spend time with your family, time you could spend in selfish pursuits of pleasure, you’re worshipping the idea of family and community.

An excellent way to find out what you worship is to ask yourself two questions.

What do I spend my money on, and what do I do with my time?

The answers to those questions will tell you what ideal, what God, you regularly worship and place on a throne.

The word worship means “to give worth to something,” which means you can worship pretty much anything, not just Gods and ideals.

At the foot of what throne do you bow?

What spirit hovers above the alters upon which you make your sacrifices?

If you don’t know the answers to those questions, you’re in trouble.

Because you will bow, and you will make sacrificial offerings to something, to some ideal you wish to make manifest in your world.

Even if it goes no further than thoughtlessly spending money on something or doing something out of habit, your actions and investments determine what you consider to be important, what you give worth to.

The question is, and always has been, what do you serve?

For serve you must, but to serve blindly runs the risk of being possessed by some ideal, some god, that perhaps is truly a demon in disguise.

So ask yourself if your actions and investments of time, money, and energy are doing you any good.

If you realize that you’ve been worshipping at the foot of the wrong throne, that’s good news.

It’s good news because now you know. Most people don’t know what they worship, and some foolishly think they don’t worship anything at all.

But they do, even if they don’t know it. Once you figure out what you’ve been bowing down before, even if it’s something harmful, at least you know.

And once you know, you can change.