Futility of Idolatry

Readings for today: Jeremiah 10-13, Psalms 16

Many years ago, I met a young woman in crisis. She was depressed. She was struggling with thoughts of self-harm. She was beginning to have suicidal ideation. She was not a Christian but came to me through a mutual friend, looking for help. As she shared her story with me, I asked her if she had any connection to spirituality and/or religious faith. She told me about her spirit animal, a purple fluffy dinosaur who she turned to when things really got dark and hard. I asked her if her dinosaur ever responded. She wasn’t sure. Just the thought, however, brought her comfort on some level. I told her I was glad she found comfort but asked her if it mattered that her dinosaur wasn’t real. She hadn’t given it much thought. “What if I told you I could introduce you to a God who is real, is actually with you in your suffering, and is able to heal?” I asked. She said she had never even heard such a thing was possible. So I shared the gospel with her and encouraged her to work with a licensed, professional Christian counselor who could help her address her depression and include a faith perspective.

I share this story to illustrate the futility of idolatry. One of the reasons the Bible considers idolatry so dangerous is because it is empty. It cannot deliver on what it promises. It cannot solve our problems. It cannot bind up our wounds. It cannot heal our disease. It cannot bring any real comfort or hope because it is all just wishful thinking. The gods and goddesses and spirit animals we believe in just aren’t real. They don’t exist. It doesn’t matter how many times we pray. It doesn’t matter how many sacrifices we make. It doesn’t matter how we feel. They aren’t real and will fail us in the long term.

Sadly, this isn’t a new problem. It’s a persistent one throughout the history of humanity, including among the people of God. Listen again to how the prophet Jeremiah talks about it, “This is what the Lord says: Do not learn the way of the nations or be terrified by signs in the heavens, although the nations are terrified by them, for the customs of the peoples are worthless. Someone cuts down a tree from the forest; it is worked by the hands of a craftsman with a chisel. He decorates it with silver and gold. It is fastened with hammer and nails, so it won’t totter. Like scarecrows in a cucumber patch, their idols cannot speak. They must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them for they can do no harm  — and they cannot do any good.” (Jeremiah‬ ‭10‬:‭2‬-‭5‬ ‭CSB) The imagery is striking. Scarecrows in a field? Trees turned into totems by craftsmen? Pagan customs that are worthless? This is why God speaks so strongly against the ways of the nations. Do not learn them. Do not copy them. Do not adopt them. Hold yourself apart from them. These gods didn’t make the heavens and the earth. They have no real impact on the world. They cannot affect a person’s life.

So what should we do? Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call on Him while He may be heard. Why? Because there is no one like the Lord. Jeremiah 10:6, “Lord, there is no one like you. You are great; your name is great in power.” God is great and God is powerful. Unlike the false gods we surround ourselves with, God is the Creator of the heavens and the earth. He rules over all He has made. His impact on the world is real. His work in a person’s life is transformative. He can meet all our needs and address all our issues and heal all our hurts. Most of all, His love is real. We can have an actual relationship with Him. Furthermore, He wants to be with us. He laid down His life for us. His life and death and resurrection is a fact of human history. So let me encourage you to turn from your futile idolatry and turn back to the Living God.

Readings for tomorrow: Jeremiah 14-17, Psalms 17

The Emptiness of Idols

Readings for today: 1 Samuel 4-8, Psalms 79

John Calvin once said the human heart is a factory for idols. We produce them at a rapid, almost continuous clip. Unwilling to allow God to be God, we try to cut Him down to our size. We try to remake Him in our own image. We try to reduce Him to a level we can understand or comprehend. Even worse, we try to control Him or manage Him or compel Him to act on our behalf. We make deals with God. We try to bargain with God. We treat God as if He’s somehow owes us something in return for our obedience. It’s all nonsense, of course. The idols we create for ourselves, whether they take the shape of a statue or totem or some other sacred object or they are just an idea in our minds, are empty. They are worthless. They hold no power whatsoever which is why God hates them. He hates what such idols do to us. Do to our conception of God. Do to our understanding of God. Do to our faith in God. Idols warp and corrupt and pervert our relationship with God which is why the Bible is full of warnings against them. They are dangerous. They place us at great risk. Those who trust in them find only death and despair.

Ancient Israel was an idolatrous nation under the corrupt leadership of Eli and his sons. They treated the Ark of the Covenant like a sacred totem. They believed it gave them power. They believed it represented God. So when they are being oppressed by their enemies, they send it into battle assuming it will guarantee them a victory. Tragically, they find out it’s just a nice box. It has no power of its own. They are routed in battle as God exposes the emptiness of their idolatry. Of course, the Philistines make the same mistake. They believe the Ark has great significance as well which is why they bring it before the idol of their own god, Dagon. Once again, God exposes the emptiness of their idolatry by cutting off Dagon’s head and hands and forcing him to bow before the Lord. Furthermore, He sends a plague and oppresses the Philistines, thereby showing He has no need of idols to do His work. He has no need of a people to do His work. God’s power is not bound by anything or anyone in this world. He will accomplish His will according to His purposes. And soon, the Philistines send the Ark back home where it belongs.

Can you identify the idols in your own life? They will be the things you hold more dear than God Himself. It could be something bad for you like an addiction or a dysfunction or an unhealthy pattern of behavior that you refuse to deal with or let go of. It could be a good thing in your life that you’ve elevated to an ultimate thing like your spouse or your children or your job or your lifestyle. What do you believe you simply could not live without? What do you believe is too much to give up, even to God? What gives you nightmares at the thought of losing it? What are you most protective of? What makes you most anxious and afraid? These are great questions to reflect on as you ponder where you’ve allowed idolatry to creep into your heart. Once you’ve identified your idols, surrender them to the Lord. Do what the Israelites did under Samuel, “If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, get rid of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths that are among you, set your hearts on the Lord, and worship only him. Then he will rescue you from the Philistines.” So the Israelites removed the Baals and the Ashtoreths and only worshiped the Lord.” (1 Samuel‬ ‭7‬:‭3‬-‭4‬ ‭CSB‬‬)

Readings for tomorrow: 1 Samuel 9-12, Psalms 80

False Gods

Readings for today: Jeremiah 51, Psalm 137

The human race is haunted by the primordial memory of a relationship with God. It’s coded into our DNA. It’s like a hole in our souls. We simply cannot deny it nor can we dismiss it or ignore it. It’s arguably what makes Homo Sapiens unique among all other animal species. And it’s why we crave transcendence. It’s why we engage in worship. It’s why we feel the way we do when we see a beautiful sunrise or breathe the air on the summit of a mountain or feel the power as we swim in the depths of the ocean. There is a sense of awe and wonder embedded deep within all of our hearts. This is why we are so adept at making our own gods. We have a desperate need to connect with the divine. We make them out of wood, stone, and precious metals. We give them all kinds of names. We associate them with all sorts of activities. Some of them are very human-like. Others are quite other-worldly. Some of them even represent a combination of species. All of them represent power and control to us on some level which is why we seek to appease them. But they are false. They are not real. They carry no weight. They have no authority. They are empty and lifeless which is why God, the True God, hates them so very much.

As Christians, we worship the True God. How do I know? I know because He has revealed Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ. He actually entered human history and became one of us. His suffering and death is a matter of historical record as is His resurrection. The tomb was empty and hundreds of eye-witnesses saw Him face to face. They touched Him. They ate with Him. They spoke with Him. In Christ, God made Himself known. No other religion can make this kind of claim. No other god or goddess has revealed him/herself in this way. This is what sets us apart. It’s what gives us confidence that when we pray and when we obey and when we place our faith in God, we are not just engaging in wishful thinking. Our hopes are not blind. Our faith is not just a wild guess. We believe in the One True and Living God who created all things, redeemed all things, and one day will make all things new. I love how Jeremiah describes it in today’s reading…

“By his power he made earth. His wisdom gave shape to the world. He crafted the cosmos. He thunders and rain pours down. He sends the clouds soaring. He embellishes the storm with lightnings, launches the wind from his warehouse. Stick-god worshipers look mighty foolish! god-makers embarrassed by their handmade gods! Their gods are frauds, dead sticks— deadwood gods, tasteless jokes. They’re nothing but stale smoke. When the smoke clears, they’re gone. But the Portion-of-Jacob is the real thing; he put the whole universe together, With special attention to Israel. His name? God-of-the-Angel-Armies!” (Jeremiah‬ ‭51‬:‭15‬-‭19‬ ‭MSG‬‬)

Why does our God hate false gods so much? It’s because they are frauds. They are nothing but smoke and hot air. They offer nothing because they have no power or authority. Those who place their trust in false gods end up bitterly disappointed. They end up wounded and in pain. They receive no strength to overcome their challenges, no wisdom to help address the complex issues life often throws our way, and no power to help us endure any suffering. They are left alone and it’s not good for human beings to be alone! I think of a conversation I had with one of my kids several years ago. She had a friend who was suffering from all kinds of mental, emotional, and physical health issues. She had no one to talk to. No support from her family. No friends to speak of besides my daughter. No trust in her teachers at school. She felt very much alone. Not only that but she had placed her faith in false gods. Spirit animals who were not real and so had no spiritual resources to draw on to help her make it through. I encouraged my daughter to share Christ with her. To help her connect with a God who is real and alive and active in our world. A God who loved her with an everlasting love and who promised to be there for her no matter what challenges she might be going through. A God who is with us in good times and bad. A God who is faithful to walk us through every dark valley. This is why what we believe matters, friends! If we are counting on false gods to get us through life, we will be let down. We will live lives of fear and anxiety and quiet desperation. But if we place our faith in the true God, we will never be forsaken.

Readings for tomorrow: None

High Places

Readings for today: 2 Kings 14-15, 2 Chronicles 25-27

High places. We see them pop up all over the place in the Kings and Chronicles. (In fact, the picture for today’s blog is a “high place” from Petra that I climbed to when I was there last summer.) Often the righteousness of kings is judged on whether or not they tolerate them. What are they? Originally, they were sacred spaces where the Canaanite tribes worshipped their gods. If you flip back to Deuteronomy 12, you read these words, “You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place.” (Deut. ‭12:2-3‬) Yahweh had set His people apart. They would be different. They would not be like any other tribe or nation. Because they were a nation of priests, they would worship Yahweh in the way He prescribed. “But you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go, and there you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present, your vow offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock. And there you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your households, in all that you undertake, in which the Lord your God has blessed you.” (Deut.‬ ‭12:5-7‬) 

Where was this place? Originally, it was the Tabernacle that traveled with them in the wilderness. After Solomon, it was the Temple in Jerusalem. This was the place where God had set His name and indwelt with His presence. This was the “place” the Israelites were commanded to seek when they worshipped. However, the travel could be difficult. The cost was high. It meant time away from the fields. Time away from home. After the kingdoms split, it meant possible defection by the northern tribes so the Israelite kings set up their own shrines (the sin of Jeroboam) and forbade their people from traveling to Jerusalem at the prescribed times. The people set up their own shrines to Yahweh on the very high places He once commanded them to destroy. If we assume the best of them, they were trying to worship Yahweh. Trying to remain faithful. Just not in the way He demanded or the way He deserved. At their worst, they adopted the worship practices of the locals and worshipped false gods.  

God cares about our worship. He cares about what happens week in and week out in local churches all over the world. Not because God is taking attendance but because God seeks worshippers who will worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. Worshippers who will give Him the worship He demands in the way He deserves. Worshippers who will not compromise. Worshippers who will honor Him as holy. Worshippers who refuse to make themselves the center of the experience. Worshippers who lay aside their wants, their needs, their desires, their preferences to come before the Lord in humility. To do anything else is to create a “high place.” A shrine to another god. And most of that time, that “god” is Self. The besetting sin of the Western Church is the idolatry of self. We are the object of our worship. Our satisfaction is the key performance indicator. We engage worship based on our own personal preferences. We refuse to honor God as holy. God as supreme. God as Lord. We are proud. We are arrogant. We think far too much of ourselves. And if the lives of the kings teach us anything it is this...God will not be mocked. We will be judged on the basis of who or what we worship. 

Readings for tomorrow: Jonah 1-4