Rethinking idolatry

Note: I'd really like to hear some discussion on some of these posts, as I'm interested to know how people view some of the thoughts I might bring up. So please, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section. It creates a great dialogue. Plus, it helps me feel important. Your little comment says, "Hey, Chris. I read your blog. I thought it was neat. I don't think you're a failure; in fact, I wrote this little comment to show you how swell I think it is." My fragile little ego can be saved by your simple comments. Even if the comment really says, "You're a moron. You've never been right in your entire life and your opinions are so ridiculous I think your soul is in peril." It still makes me feel special that you cared enough to write me a note to tell me I'm an idiot. Don't be afraid, just click that little comment button. There, pathetic plea over. On to the post:

In my years as a Christian, I've heard countless sermons on idolatry. Preachers have exhorted me time and time again of all the things that I have made my idol in place of the one true God: money, time, sex, career, self-image, etc. I don't doubt for a second their intentions, and the warnings and rebukes these men of God have given are certainly true and right. However, as I've thought about this and looked at some of the biblical material, I'm not convinced any of them have gotten to the heart of idolatry. In fact, for as many sermons as I've heard on the sin of idolatry, I'm not sure that any of them have accurately described this sin.

We live in an age of misunderstood idolatry. To be sure, there are idols all around us, and not just in a Hindu temple or a pagan society. They are in our own homes and certainly in our own hearts. But in an age so far removed from the Ancient Near East, do we really understand what it means to commit idolatry? Let me explain.

If you've heard the same sermons on idolatry that I have, you have been told that an idol is something that takes the place of God -- something that compels your worship and thus robs him of his glory. This is a real danger to be sure, but to me it sounds much more like a violation of the first commandment ("you shall have no other gods before me") than the second. Look at the text from Exodus 20 as God lays out these first two commandments:

• And God spoke these words, saying, "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments." (Exodus 20:1-6)

And again in Deuteronomy, he says, "You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape ..." (Deuteronomy 4:15-16).

Some traditions have lumped the first and second commandments together to make the first commandment. They typically delineate two different kinds of coveting in the tenth commandment to keep the number at ten. This is evidence that the two commands are certainly very closely tied, but I think there is a nuance that is missed when we speak of idolatry in the same way as the first commandment. I differentiate between the two like this: the first commandment tells us WHO we are to worship, the second commandment concerns HOW we are to worship him.

As you can see from the passage in Deuteronomy, God is very concerned that his people remember that they did not see any form when he spoke to them at Horeb. They saw fire on the mountain and they were (understandably) terrified, but they did not actually see God. I believe that this was a very important fact for God to remind them of, because he is not a creature. One of mankind's most persistent sins is to treat God as a super-human being rather than something totally transcendant. All the gods of Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology are essentially just humans with godlike powers. They still have weaknesses, they can engage in sinful and shameful behavior, and in fact can behave quite petty and childlike. In fact, in the first case of Israel's idolatry (i.e. the golden calf), they aren't as much trying to create a new deity as they are trying to make God more accessible to them, on their own terms. Their initiative to create this idol stems from the fact that they don't know if Moses is coming back down, and thus they have no way to know how to relate to the God that just revealed himself to them (Exodus 32). So they give Aaron their gold and he fashions the infamous golden calf. They correctly identify him as the one that brought them out of Egypt, the land of slavery, but they prefer a god that they can see and touch (perhaps even control?) rather than the terrible God who revealed himself in fire at Mt. Sinai.

It's not quite such a ridiculous sin when you think of all the ways we violate this commandment today. We like to think of God as being a lot like us, because that in turn makes us quite godly. It's quite comfortable to imagine God as a white, middle-class Republican -- maybe I'll run into Him down at the country club! This is foolish, but it happens all the time. Voltaire (a known agnostic) once said, "In the beginning, God made man in his image, and man has been returning the favor ever since." Sad, but true. In our efforts to create a more tame god, we miss out on the opportunity to behold the awesome majesty of the God of Sinai, who reveals himself in power. It's quite a poor trade, if you ask me.

So now let's test the whole comments thing ... how does idolatry manifest itself today? Do you agree with my "redefinition" (I know I'm not the only person to think this way, trust me, it's hardly "my" definition), or would you propose another? If the discussion is interesting, I may pursue the topic further in subsequent posts. If not, I'll feel like a loser and wear black t-shirts and listen to Dashboard Confessional or something. No one wants that, trust me.