Jeremiah 17:5“This is what the LORD says, ‘Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord.”

The people of Israel in 600 B.C. thought that they were clever. They had survived as a nation for over 700 years. They watched the rise and fall of other nations around them. They weren’t the super power they had once been in the days of David and Solomon, but they were convinced that they could continue to get by on their wits. Their shrewd manipulation of the political powers around them would save them. All they needed was the right mix of diplomacy, military strength, and well-chosen allies, and they would be secure.

There is nothing wrong with shrewd politics, careful diplomacy, or a strong defense and allies. But you see the weakness they all have in common: they all depend on fallible human beings. You realize we have similar issues of misplaced trust in our time. Have you watched the Disney movie The Incredibles 2? Both the original and the sequel play on society’s longing for superheroes with super powers to come to the rescue. Yet people fear those powers, and they disgust when the same superheroes make a mess of things.

Outside of The Incredibles movies, we see the fascination with superheroes easily enough. Hollywood churns out movie after movie about Superman, Batman, Spider-man, Wonder Woman, and The Avengers, to name a few. For all their super powers, these characters sometimes make a mess.

Now here’s our problem: We actually put our trust in superheroes. Only, our real-life superheroes don’t have supernatural powers. They have political powers. Our nation is very divided about the kind of politicians and political systems they like. A little historical study can point out the relative strengths and weaknesses of the various political theories, if we are honest enough to do a sober study. But they all have this in common: they are human inventions created, promoted, and utilized by sinful, selfish human beings. They are bound to be riddled with moral holes and blind-spots. They are open to abuse and corruption by the people who use them.

This problem is only compounded as more and more individuals idolize these superheroes. They become the kind of person Jeremiah curses: “who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord.”

That last phrase is the real nub of the issue, “whose heart turns away from the Lord.” Jeremiah’s Israel still went through the motions of worshiping God. They observed the major holidays. They brought the required sacrifices. But their hearts weren’t in it. The people showed their true colors by their moral degeneracy. Materialism, sexual promiscuity and deviancy, hard-heartedness toward the poor, substance abuse, corruption in the courts–that is the lifestyle embraced by these people whose hearts had turned away from the Lord.

The Christian faith in our country looks eerily similar. Europeans, oddly, consider us a hyper-religious people because so many Americans still go to church. But that is changing fast. Across our country, seven out of ten Christian congregations are growing smaller, two out of ten are holding steady, and only one out of ten is growing. In most cases that one is taking in Christians from the others.

But the clearer evidence that our hearts are turning away from the Lord can be seen in the lives of the people who still go to church. Did the list of sins I cited from Jeremiah’s day sound uncomfortably familiar? A friend of our family recently gave me a book called Gods at War. It categorizes our modern idols under three “temples,” the “temple of pleasure,” the “temple of power,” and the “temple love.” Under pleasure he lists food, sex, and entertainment. Under power he describes success, money, and achievement. And under love he identifies romance, family, and “me.” All of these things become rivals to the God of the Bible for the love and trust of our hearts. They offer people, and the things people produce, as a substitute. This is defiance of the very first commandment, “You shall have no other gods.”

Jeremiah’s warning is not intended to hurt us, but to warn us. The Lord is seeking to turn us back to himself. He is waiting with grace for those who do.