Concerning cultural idolatry

I have been enjoying a recent conversation with a friend on his blog about how much our Christianity has been shaped by our American culture, particularly our materialism. I was reminded of this conversation while reading about the kings of Israel in the Old Testament. After Solomon died, two tribes followed his son, Rehoboam, but the other 10 tribes split off to follow Jeroboam. Now Jeroboam was no moron and began to realize that if all his people kept going down to worship at the temple in Jerusalem then their allegiance would return to Rehoboam. So he made two golden calves so the people could stay in Israel and worship. Well, after Jeroboam died and other kings came along, they kept the calves around so people wouldn't have to return to Jerusalem. Some of them tried hard to follow God, they tore down Asherah poles and altars to Baal. They killed prophets to other gods. But none of them got rid of the golden calves. It says each of them "followed in the idolatry that their father, Jeroboam son of Nebat, had caused Israel to commit." They allowed their culture to shape their behavior. Rather than follow what God told them to do, they filtered what God told them through what their culture told them. In other words, they followed their culture first and God second. Unfortunately, that sounds real familiar. How often do we follow our culture before we follow God. God's commands and character is very important to us, quite a high priority, but only to the extent that our culture allows. For example, from my previous conversation about materialism, in response to the question of how to receive eternal life, Jesus tells a rich man to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor, then come follow Him. We tend to focus more on saying a prayer to be "born again" rather than actually following Christ. We've allowed people to continue in their cultural idolatry by simply adding God to a list of gods to be worshiped. Like Jeroboam and the kings of Israel, we follow the commands that fit our culture, but we don't have courage enough to follow God first no matter what culture would say. Imagine what would happen if we did.