Recently, some New York seminary students exhibited their unbiblical imaginations by idolatrously confessing their sins to potted plants. Sound silly? It is.

Today in chapel, we confessed [our sins] to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor. What do you confess to the plants in your life?1

New York’s Union Theological Seminary (an affiliate of Columbia University) has a long reputation for rejecting the Bible’s authority and doctrines, but plant worship is a new low. What’s going on? In short, if people don’t worship the real God, they’ll eventually imagine and worship fake gods.

Not only is it our duty to glorify God as Creator, and to thank Him for creating us, it’s dangerous if we fail to do so. Scripture says that failing to revere God as our Maker is a path to disaster—because such failures flow into vain imaginations, darkened hearts, and reprobate-minded follies.

Because, although they [i.e., all humans who hold the truth of God in unrighteousness] knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals, and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness.... And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind… (Romans 1:21-26a, 28a)