IDENTIFYING IDOLS
It has been noted that the difference between the first and the second of the Ten Commandments is that the first instructs us to worship God alone while the second instructs us how to worship God alone. Another way of stating this is that the first command instructs us to keep God first while the second instructs us to keep him separate. We must not treat God the way idolaters treat their gods. We must not treat him the way we treat our gods.
We do well to recognise that we are all tempted to idolatry. Calvin wrote that the human heart is a perpetual forge of idols. He did not mean that we are unendingly tempted to produce statues of Zeus, Ra, or Ganesh. He meant that we are prone to treat God as nothing special. We are prone to relegate him in our affections to the same place as—or even lower than—our other affections.
Paul Tillich has defined faith as “the state of being ultimately concerned.” We worship, in other words, that which ultimately concerns us. Your god is whatever is of ultimate concern to you. Since we all have something of ultimate concern, we are all worshippers. The question is, what holds that place of ultimate concern in your life?
It comes down to a question of value. We far too often fail to grasp God’s inestimable worth. Our sinful hearts place inordinate value on things like money, success, family, and education, and the unbelieving culture elevates the worth of these things. The result is that we underestimate God’s worth in our lives and therefore fail to accord him the place of ultimate concern that belongs to him alone.
In this series of devotions, we will consider some of the idols that we are prone to in Western-influenced Christianity and explore some ways in which we can overcome this idolatry.
Idolising Tradition (Matthew 14:34–15:20)
Like every other idol we have considered, tradition can be, and often is, a good thing. While Protestant churches typically don’t elevate tradition to the same level of authority as other churches, we should be careful of quickly casting aside practices that the...
Idolising Family (Luke 14:25–33)
As we have considered our temptation to idolatry, we have observed that our idols are usually good things that we make ultimate things. Christians rarely idolise things that are explicitly evil but frequently find inordinate satisfaction and security in God’s good...
Idolising Desire (Psalm 37:4–5)
Oprah Winfrey famously stated some years ago that her favourite Bible verse is Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” She went on to offer an interpretation of the verse. Now what that says to me, “Lord” has a wide...
Idolising Celebrity (1 Corinthians 1:10–17)
I recently came across an article in which the author wrote of being “let down” and “confused” by a particular celebrity. The author had looked up to this particular songwriter but had become disillusioned when she wrote a song with lyrics antagonistic to another...
Idolising Dreams (1 Thessalonians 4:9–12)
In Disney’s Zootopia, the main character—a rabbit aspiring to a career in law enforcement—talks at one point to what appears to be a baby fox, dressed like an elephant. The kid’s dream is to be an elephant when he grows up but everybody laughs at this dream....
Idolising Comfort (James 1:1–18)
In their groundbreaking book, The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argue that good intentions and bad ideas are a recipe for disaster. The authors examine the harmful effects of overprotecting children and young adults by idolising...