Idolatry in the 21st Century

I'm not sure if i mentioned this before, but lately I've been reading from the book of Jeremiah. The parallels between the attitudes in Jeremiah's time and the present day are stunning! At one point it all got so intense that I had to stop reading for a couple of days!

While it is easy to relate to the attitudes of the people of Jeremiah's day, relating to their sins is a little more subtle. As I see it, there were two major areas in which the people of Jeremiah's day sinned:

1) Replacing God, by conducting their lives by their own strength.

2) Worshiping Idols, particularly those that were also worshiped by the nations around them.

The first one of these has largely been beaten to death  by many of us in our times and I  don't  want to dwell on it too much right now, but I think that the first one is the foundation for the second one. We start off wanting to  get a life that we can control, and the will of God is something that is beyond our control, so we ignore Him. This is quite easy to do as the society around us largely ignores Him as well.

Then we replace Him with gods of our own making. This is a bit more subtle. We are too sophisticated to think that we can actually make a statue or "graven image" with our own hands, and then bow to it, and pay homage as though it were real, but make no mistake, we do build things in our lives that take the place in our hearts that belong only to God.

Many times our idols are material things. Paul pointed out on two separate occasions that greed (covetousness) becomes an idol (Colossians 3:5; Ephesians 5:5). We are in a quest to acquire; and often the quest is as important to us as the acquisition itself. The quest for the better car, the bigger house, the greater comfort from having enough money and things brings us to the point that we can never really have enough. We disguise this quest as an attempt to make a better life for our loved ones. The important point here is not that we are trying to do better for ourselves and our families than we should, but that we are putting this material quest ahead of God, and we are not following His leadership in the quest.

 Idolatry in our time goes beyond the bounds of materialism. Often we are seeing ideology and political involvement as a god-substitute in our world. Both are not evil in themselves. In fact i have argued in the past that we need to get involved in the political process. Once again, it is a matter of whether we are pursuing our ideology  and politics at God's direction and following Him, or whether we are jumping into the fray, and expecting Him to follow us.

Our religious practice itself can be idolatry. If we are more committed to following God in a particular way of practice, than to actually following Him, we can, unfortunately, make our certain denominational (or non-denominational) way an idol. Once again, the right way is to follow Him, rather than being committed to extra-biblical practices.

We could go on about all the possibilities of things that we could turn into idols. The whole point is that we need to follow Him, rather than to follow what seems right or appealing to us. I know that this sounds vague, but that too is the point. Jesus said to His disciples "follow me". This is both the privilege and the challenge of the Christian life.

So why do we follow after things other than Him? For one thing it is, as we stated earlier, more controllable. Moreover, it is easier to understand. We often "lean on our own understanding" because we do in fact understand what we are doing. It is clear that the disciples who followed Jesus on earth did not always understand where He was taking them. Neither do we. In the words of Stormy Omartian, we often have "just enough light for the step I'm on". Often we are influenced by the world around us. We are conditioned to think as the world thinks and act as it acts, and it is hard for us to break out of this mold in which we are conditioned to operate. Frankly, it is not always wrong to do this, but we need to be ready to step out when He calls us to do so.

This one is getting old too, but I'll quote it once again (the word of God never really gets old):

"do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Romans 12:2 ((ESV)

The world in which we live abounds with idols. A very good book on identifying and avoiding idolatry in our time is Dr. Timothy Keller's book; Counterfeit Gods. I have read and re-read this excellent book, and have since put it in storage, so I cannot quote it, but I recommend that you read it for more information on dealing with this important issue of faith in our day.

So let us not follow our world and serve its idols. Let us be like the Thessalonian church who had become famous in their day because they " . . . turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God." [1 Thessalonians 1:9 ESV]

Thanks for sharing this moment with me today.