Standing With Pagan Gods

By Jean-Philippe Gabriel — frameworklove.com | April 10, 2025

In recent months, I have heard a recurring refrain: We must stand with Israel to stand with God. It is spoken with conviction, often drawn from scripture, and rooted in a belief that to align with the Jewish people is to align with the Creator Himself.

But beneath that conviction lies an assumption worth examining: the idea that God is still the God of tribes, borders, and chosen peoples — the supreme monarch of a single nation. This view, for all its sincerity, may not reflect the God revealed in Jesus Christ. In fact, it may still carry the imprint of something far older: the logic of pagan religion.

Pagan Logic, Christian Words

In pagan systems, the “god” is not only named and localized but also possessed — tied to a tribe, temple, or territory. The god is ours, and our honoring of him (through sacrifice, ritual, allegiance) secures his favor. The relationship is transactional: we give devotion, he gives victory, rain, fertility, or protection.

That’s why the claim “My God is the true God” already carries a pagan undertone — it assumes God can be claimed, contained, or enlisted, and that His favor is a reward for loyalty. In the ancient world, that was the defining difference between gods: the god who “stood with” your people was the one worthy of your allegiance, because loyalty was expected to be repaid in tangible blessings.

When Christians, knowingly or not, speak of God as being “on our side” in political, ethnic, or national conflicts, they slip back into that same pagan structure. Even if they reject idols and polytheism, they keep the transactional, territorial, and partisan logic intact — the very thing Jesus overturned.

If God is love, then He cannot be claimed or enlisted. Love is not “on a side.” It is universal, self-giving, and impartial. The moment we wield God as proof that our side is right, we have already stepped back into pagan imagery.

The Pagan Remnant in Monotheism

If we look closely at Christ’s ministry, monotheism as an argument is almost beside the point. Jesus never debates the existence of other gods or tries to prove there is only one God. His focus is on revealing the nature of God as love and opening a universal path through grace.

In that light, “one God” is less a competitive claim (ours is real, theirs is fake) and more a symbolic shorthand for undivided allegiance to love. Monotheism in the old framework still assumes the pagan problem: multiple gods competing for loyalty, with “ours” as supreme. But once God is revealed as love, the contest disappears. Love has no rivals.

If God is truly love, then He is not “the single correct deity” in some cosmic roster — He is the universal first principle, the structure of grace itself. Monotheism becomes only a metaphor for singleness of devotion to that principle, not an ontological competition against other beings.

The Christian Contradiction

The “monotheistic God” framing actually boxes Christians into a contradiction when they defend it in old, pagan-inherited terms. If “monotheism” means “only one god exists,” but that god clearly has at least two distinct personhoods (Father and Son), then in the old framework you’ve already broken the rule.

In classical pagan logic, two distinct beings with their own will and mind would be polytheism. The Church resolves this through the Trinity, but the old sovereignty model still misleads, because it tries to fit love’s relational reality into a numerical box.

If instead you start from love’s ontology — creation, autonomy, succession — then the “oneness” of God is not about exclusivity of count but about coherence of relationship. The Father and Son are not one because they are a single person, but because they are perfectly aligned in love. In that sense, the “monotheism” debate is a distraction; the deeper truth is that there is only one structure of love, and all who live in it are one.

Standing With No One — Standing in Love

So should we stand with Israel because God stands with Israel? The answer from love’s logic is simple: God stands with no one as a partisan. He hopes for everyone, because all are His children. Yes, the Jewish people are His first witness. Yes, they have suffered under Hamas’ rockets. But now the people of Gaza suffer too.

Under the old framework, God’s people were called to stand with Him by standing with His nation. Under the new, we are called to stand in Him by standing in love. This does not mean abandoning concern for Israel or any other nation. It means rejecting the idea that loyalty to God can be measured by political allegiance.

God’s kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36), and His cause is not advanced by territorial victories or tribal survival. To stand with God today is to stand where love stands — alongside the oppressed, the enemy, the stranger, the outcast. Sometimes that will align with the interests of Israel. Sometimes it will not. But it will always align with the interests of love.

The “stand with Israel” battle cry risks pulling us back into the old pagan structure: God imagined as a supreme ruler to whom we pledge loyalty by defending His “favored” nation. The cross becomes a banner under which national or ethnic causes march. But the logic of God’s love is incompatible with divine favoritism. Once love is revealed as the governing principle, the old supremacy model is not just incomplete — it is obsolete.

When the Old Ways Returned

It was not always so. The earliest Christians saw God as revealed in Christ—love’s essence, untied to tribe or nations, and whose favor was never power. But by the Middle Ages, the reversal, which begun under Constantine in the 4th century, was complete. Sure, the Reformation altered doctrines but preserved the logic of supremacy, which now applied to new “blocs” defined by denomination, creed, or nation.

The founders of the United States carried this language into the American Experiment—a project blending Enlightenment liberty with a moral order believed to reflect God’s will. The language of divine blessing, once tied to Christendom, was now tied to the American project. The result was the same old pagan pattern: our God stands with us, therefore our cause is righteous. In this way, America inherited—and in some ways perfected—the medieval habit of recasting the true God as a national patron.

The True God as a Pagan Idol

And here lies the uncomfortable truth: you can worship the true God in a false way. If your worship casts God as a partisan, tribal, supremacy-based deity — even if He is the actual Creator — it becomes idolatry, because you’ve remade Him into an image that serves your side.

In biblical terms, idolatry is not just worshiping a false god; it is misrepresenting the true one. Israel was repeatedly warned against this — not just from chasing other gods, but from misusing His name to justify injustice, oppression, or self-interest. That’s the “taking the Lord’s name in vain” of Exodus 20:7.

The Church can say “We worship the one true God” and still, in practice, treat Him as a pagan idol — a divine mascot for our cause rather than the universal love revealed in Christ. When that happens, the “correct” God becomes, functionally, the wrong god.