Of the “Ten Commandments” perhaps you can name a few: Don’t steal, Don’t murder, honor you mother and father, keep sabbath. Many of these are straight forward, but Peter Rollins mentions an interesting point from philosopher Slavoj Zizek. The point that I gathered is Zizek argues that commandment “You shall have no other Gods before me” might me that we should not have gods “in front” the God of the Bible. As in physically before, in front of. The idea being that we all have little gods and perhaps the commandment is saying, keep your other little gods, just don’t worship them in before (in front of or prior to worshiping) God.
This may sound odd but the Bible does not begin at monotheism. Monotheism says that there is ONLY one God. However, when you read the Bible you will see that there are in fact many gods. For instance, Psalm 82 assume there are many gods: God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment (82:1). In a monotheistic worldview there is no need to mention other gods.
However the Bible does not stay in the polytheistic world very long before it makes a theological step toward monotheism. Before arriving at monotheism, there is a long stop at something called henotheism. Henotheism might admit there are other gods, but that our God is the best. Psalm 95 says, For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
This is where Zizek’s observation comes into play. The Ten Commandments is in the era of henotheism and thus having no other gods before the God of the Bible makes sense in a henotheistic world.
But today we are supposed to be monotheistic. That is we are supposed to understand that there is only one God. No others. This God is the Alpha and the Omega - the greatest and the weakest. God is all there is.
However, a case might be made that we are stuck in the henotheism. We live our lives taking the commandment “no other gods before me” very literally. That is, we worship our little gods of power, money, ego, prestige, nature, resentment, and envy but we don’t do it “before” we worship God of Jesus Christ.
The problem is not that we worship God, it is that we practice having no other gods before God.