Psalm 78:54-58

And so he brought them to the border of his holy land, to the hill country his right hand had taken. He drove out nations before them and allotted their lands to them as an inheritance; he settled the tribes of Israel in their homes. But they put God to the test and rebelled against the Most High; they did not keep his statutes. Like their ancestors they were disloyal and faithless, as unreliable as a faulty bow. They angered him with their high places; they aroused his jealousy with their idols.

The epitome of Israel's failure is that the people turned from the living God to worship idols. Idolatry is foundational to what is wrong with the human race (Romans 1:21-25). Anything that is functionally more important to you than God is an idol. Anything you love more than God - even a good thing like a spouse or child or social cause - is a false god. Because we love them too much, we are wracked with uncontrollable fears and anger when they are threatened and inconsolable despair when we lose them. Until you can identify your idols you cannot understand yourself. Until you turn from them you can't know and walk with God.
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