The Druids and Sun Worship

A few years ago the Winston-Salem Journal  carried a news story on the Druids.  The lead paragraph begins, “Druids have been worshipping the sun and earth for thousands of years in Europe.”  The article further elaborates on this ancient religion saying, “They worship natural forces such as thunder and the sun and spirits that they believe arise from places such as mountains and rivers.  They do not worship a single god or creator, but try to cultivate a sacred relationship with the natural world.”

How is it that ancient people such as the Druids came to worship the sun and earth and other natural forces?  We might enlarge the question to include not only the Druids’ worship of nature but other ancient practices such as idolatry, witchcraft, astrology, divination, etc.  For that matter we might ask how is it that so many people in modern society are turning to these same pagan practices.

The Bible gives a very clear straight forward answer –when a people reject the one true God, the Creator, they just naturally turn to one foolish thing or another.  The apostle Paul states the governing principle in his letter to the Romans:  “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were they thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.  And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things…Who change the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever.  Amen.”  (Romans 1:21-23, 25)

Now take a look at the modern world and you can see the same thing happening all over again.  As people today reject the one true God, they turn to the same foolish practices so prevalent in the ancient world.  Some like the Druids worship the forces of nature.  Others turn to such superstitions as astrology or divination or witchcraft or necromancy.  This is all the natural out- growth of forgetting the one true God.

Claude