Post-Modern Idolatry

Today in Sunday School, our teacher made a comment that I hadn’t considered before. He was talking about Romans 1:23 and the progression of men avoiding God.

And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and gourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

The point he was making is that although we don’t always see idols in our modern culture, but the concept of idolatry is far from gone from even our modern culture. Any time we “re-invent” God into an image that is different from His character, as revealed in the Scripture, we have created an idol. This is one of the main problems in Christianity today. Consider the explanation of idols given in Psalms 135:15-17.

The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; They have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in theirs mouths.

This is the very picture of the god (little “g” on purpose) that many Christians want. They want a god that has given us his word (he has a mouth), but he doesn’t convict them or preach to them about sin (”they speak not”). He has eyes, because he watches over us and sends blessings, but he doesn’t see our sin. He has ears to listen to our begging for more stuff, but he doesn’t hear our speech that offends God. There is no life (breath) to the god they worship and he has very little in common with the God of the Scriptures.

The God of the Bible is a loving God, but He is also concerned with our sin. God hates sin, but we don’t want to hear that. We want a god of our own design, a god that we can form and shape into what we want. God is not play-dough that we can mold. God is a rock (Psalm 18:2); He is not formed by our desire of what He should be. Rather He IS whether we know His character or not. We should strive to learn His character and learn to know him better.

CC