Idols of our Time
Thirty years ago, Ted
Turner, founder of CNN and the Turner Broadcasting System, declared the Ten
Commandments to be outdated. As a
substitute he offered the “Ten Voluntary Initiatives” (voluntary initiatives, being less offensive to modern ears.)
During an interview at the
time, he cited the second commandment as evidence of the Decalogue’s
obsolescence. “No one worships idols
anymore,” he said, apparently unaware of the more than a billion Hindus on the
planet.
Not being the keenest of
Bible students, he was equally unaware of the fact that idolatry comes in many
forms besides its most obvious varieties.
One needn’t literally bow down before an image carved in wood or stone
to be guilty of this primeval sin. The
essence of idolatry is to give the first place in our thoughts, affections, and
decision-making process to anyone (or anything) other than God.
Not many of us are tempted
to worship the gods once revered in ancient Canaanite temples or were thought
to inhabit Mt. Olympus, or Oden or Thor of Norse mythology. But this doesn’t necessarily clear us of
idolatry because whatever is loved, feared, trusted in, or obeyed more than God
has, in effect, become an idol to us.
No matter that it’s not traditionally thought of as a deity. If we love it (whatever it is or
whoever it might be), if we fear it, trust it, or obey it
more than God, it has taken the place of God in our thoughts and affections. Paul assumes this principle when he tells us
that covetousness makes an idol out of money.
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil
desire, and covetousness, which his
idolatry.
— Colossians 3:5
Jesus made the same point in
the Sermon on the Mount when he said, “You cannot serve both God and money”
(Matt. 6:24).[1] This is what the rich young ruler discovered
(Matt. 19:16-24). Although he boasted
that he had kept the commandments from his youth, Jesus showed him that he had
not even kept the very first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before
me” (Ex. 20:3). When forced to decide
between his riches and following Jesus, he chose his riches.
It doesn’t matter whether
the thing idolized is officially called a god or not. It’s the regard we have for it – and thus the
influence it has over us – that matters.
Paul says that for some, “their god is their belly” (Phil. 3:19; cf.
Rom. 16:18). He means they are ruled by
their bodily desires. They are governed
by their instincts and appetites. They
do whatever makes them feel good in the moment.
It’s possible to sinfully
idolize one’s own family. How so? By loving them more than we love the Lord, or
by fearing to alienate them more than we fear to alienate him, or by allowing
them more influence in our decision-making than the Lord himself has. Jesus said,
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
— Matthew 10:37
We ought to love the members
of our family very dearly, but we must never love them more than we love God, nor
have any greater loyalty. The Lord
commended the tribe of Levi for standing with him when their own families stood against him.
When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the
mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him,
“Up, make us gods who shall go before us.
As for this Moses…we do not know what has become of him.”
— Exodus 32:1
And Aaron yielded to their
request. He made them a golden calf and “they
offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and
rose up to play” (Ex. 32:6). And when
Moses came down from the mountain, he was furious, and he said,
“Who is on the Lord’s
side? Come to me.” And all
the sons of Levi gathered around him.
And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord
God of Israel, ‘Put your sword on your side each of you, and go to and fro from
gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill his brother and his
companion and his neighbor.’” And the
sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And that day about three thousand men of the
people fell. And Moses said, “Today you have been ordained for the service
of the Lord, each one at
the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon
you this day.
— Exodus 32:26-29
When it came down to a
choice as to whether they would side with God or with the disobedient members
of their own family, they chose God, and they were rewarded with a special
access to God and a special divine service.
Moses would refer to this forty years later.
Give to Levi your Thummim,
and
your Urim to your godly one,
whom you tested at Massah,
with
whom you quarreled at the waters of Meribah;
who said of his father and mother,
“I
regard them not”;
he disowned his brothers
and
ignored his children.
For they observed your word
and
kept your covenant.
— Deut. 33:8-9
They were obedient in what must
be regarded as the most difficult test of obedience possible – and they were
rewarded for it. They were given a
special divine calling.
They shall teach Jacob your rules
and
Israel your law;
they shall put incense before you
and
whole burnt offerings on your altar.
— Deut.
33:10
Those who love husband or
wife, father or mother, son or daughter, more than God are not worthy of
him. They make an idol out of their
family. That may not be their intention,
but that’s the effect. We must always side with God. Always.
Even if it means siding against the members of our own family. How much more so if it means siding against
our friends, our co-workers, our political party, or whatever we perceive to be
in our own self-interest?
We must also side with God even if it means siding against our own
lives.
Whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of
me. Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
— Matthew 10:38-39
We have a natural, God-given
impulse to love the members of our own family as well as a natural, God-given
impulse to preserve our lives. Yet we
must love neither more than we love
God. This is put in a rather startling
way in Luke’s Gospel, where Jesus says,
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother
and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he
cannot be my disciple.
— Luke 14:26
He doesn’t mean that we are
to have a positive hatred for them. We
aren’t to feel any malice toward them.
This is an idiom that expresses comparison. In practical terms, when it comes down to a
choice between one or the other, the one chosen is the one loved, and the one not chosen is the one that by comparison is hated.
※
We get into trouble whenever
we elevate a relative good to the position of an absolute good, or a relative
allegiance to the level of an absolute allegiance, for then we have greater
regard for a creature than we do for the Creator (Rom. 1:25). This is the essence of idolatry. To absolutize something is to deify it, to make an idol of it.[2]
Idolatry and the State
Many people idolize the
state. In the ancient world, this was
often done literally. The ruler of
Egypt, for instance, was considered the embodiment of Ra (the sun god). Obedience to Pharaoh was obedience to
Ra. The Romans deified their
emperors. They established an imperial
cult, with a priesthood and religious rituals including the offering of
sacrifice and incense to the image of Caesar.
Until its defeat in WWII, the Japanese viewed their emperor as divine,
and one of the requirements under the terms of surrender to the United States
was that the emperor renounce all claims to divinity.
All modern statist political
philosophies also, in a sense, deify the state.
A statist political philosophy is one that makes the state the central
and supreme organizing principle of society.
Perhaps no one summarized this philosophy better than Mussolini when he
described fascism: “Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing
against the State.” But this is true of
other statist philosophies, as well, whether fascism, socialism, democratic
socialism, communism, and its softer sounding, but just as totalizing
progressivism. The state is the be all
and end all of life; it’s the highest expression of human will and the arbiter
of truth and morality. In addition to
Mussolini’s, “Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, and
nothing against the state,” we could add, “Nothing above the state and nothing
beside the state.”
Idolatry and Ethics
It should be noted that something
like idolatry is committed when we make anything other than God’s word the
standard for ethics. As Rushdoony
demonstrated so convincingly in his massive tome The Institutes of Biblical Law, “In any culture the source of law is the god of that society.”[3] But what is true of society is also true of
the individual. The source of an
individual’s ethics is that person’s god.
It sometimes happens that
people idolize abstract ethical principles.
This is done when a principle is absolutized by not admitting of any
exceptions or qualifications.
Freedom
There is no doubt that
freedom is a good thing. As Americans,
we make much of it, as we should. But
freedom has its limits. It must always
be balanced with public order and the protection of other people’s rights.
Perhaps you have heard the
story of the man who was arrested for assault and battery for punching another
man in the nose? He asked the judge if
he didn’t have the right to swing his arms in a free country. The judge said, “Your right to swing your
arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”
Freedom has its limits. We’re not morally or legally free to commit
assault and battery, nor any one of a number of other things that harms our
neighbor. But people often speak of
freedom as if were an absolute right with no exceptions or qualifications. This is the issue when it comes to the
subject of abortion. What do those who
advocate for abortion call themselves?
Pro-choice. Sounds very lovely,
doesn’t it? It does, until you inquire
about what is being chosen—the killing of an innocent human being. But this is what we come to when we idolize
freedom, idolize choice.
Free Speech
We also make much of the
First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, as we should. It’s an essential element of our
liberty. But is free speech an absolute right—the right to speak
whatever we want without any qualifications or exceptions? What about falsely yelling “fire” in a
crowded theater?[4] What about false advertising? The product label says 32 oz of peanut
butter, but it contains only 30 oz. Can
we commit fraud and justify it on the basis of our right to free speech? How about slander or bearing false witness in
a court of law?
Would those who do these
things be justified by saying, “I was just exercising my right to free
speech”? We recognize that there are – and
there must be – certain limitations on speech.
God himself imposes
limitations when he forbids lying (Lev. 19:11; Col. 3:9), slander (Lev. 19:16;
Col. 3:8), and false witness in a court of law (Ex. 20:16; Matt. 19:18; cf. Deut.
19:18-21).
Free speech is not an absolute right. But we should be quick to add that
acknowledging this doesn’t give any aid or comfort to leftists on campus or in
the media or in big tech who try to shut down conservative speech because,
contrary to their claims, the articulation of conservative ideas does no harm
to anyone. It is not the equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater. It puts no one in danger of life or
limb. It defrauds no one. It commits no injustice to anyone.
The right of free speech is
a rightly cherished principle of liberty, and we must be firm in our defense of
it. But at the same time, we must not absolutize
it, lest we forget its proper, divinely imposed qualifications.
Freedom of Religion
The same must be said of the
freedom of religion. The First Amendment
says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
The first thing to say about
this is that it was written within a certain historical context. In order to understand it properly, we must
understand it in that context. That context was a newly formed union of
Christian States, each of which had its own laws respecting religion and
certain religious tests for elected officials (belief in the Triune God;
acceptance of the Old and New Testaments as the word of God; adherence to the
Protestant religion; etc.). The Founders
wrote into the Constitution a guarantee that Congress (the law-making body at
the federal level) wouldn’t make laws
that would interfere with state laws concerning religion. The Founders, we must emphatically state,
were not seeking to establish a
secular federal government; they were seeking to leave to each state the right
to have its own religious requirements.
It’s also important to
remember that when the Founders spoke of religion, they had Christianity in
mind. The guarantee of the free exercise
of religion was specifically a guarantee to practice the Christian faith. There were only 1,000-2,000 Jews in the U.S.
at the time and probably no more Muslims than you could count on your
fingers. The Founders were thinking in
terms of the different varieties of Christianity (Episcopal, Congregational,
Presbyterian, Baptist, Lutheran, etc.).
Do you think they would have
guaranteed the free exercise of religion if there had been a large number of
Aztecs who practiced human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism, or a large number
of Muslims who practiced jihad? Should we guarantee the free exercise of
religion in these cases? Should we allow
honor killings in the name of the freedom of religion? Should we allow the administration of Sharia
law in a Muslim community that requires chopping off the hand of a thief?
A legal right to the free
exercise of religion makes sense within a Judeo-Christian framework – but to
apply it outside that framework can lead to all kinds of trouble. There must be limitations and qualifications
which must be determined by the teaching of Scripture. Someone will say, “But you’re giving Christianity
a place of legal privilege.” Yes, that’s
right, because Christianity is true, and the God of the Bible defines our
freedoms and limitations in these and in all other matters.
The Free Market
The free market is the greatest
engine for the creation of wealth and the betterment of society that exists.[5] But just because a market exists for
something doesn’t mean that that particular market should be allowed. The African slave trade existed for centuries
because there were plenty of people on both sides of the Atlantic willing to
buy and sell their fellow human beings. But
it was a sinful market through and through.
Today there is a market for fetal tissue harvested via abortion, as
sinful and wicked a thing as can be imagined.[6]
Life
Several years ago, I was
campaigning for a candidate who was running for state office, and went to
several towns in our district to speak to other pastors to recommend this
pro-life candidate to their congregations.
I talked to one pastor who asked if our candidate was against the death
penalty. I said no. He said, “Well then, he’s not pro-life, is
he?”
The term “pro-life” also has
its own context and meaning that this man ignored. The moniker has to do specifically with the
matter of abortion, and by extension with the protection of all innocent human
life from conception to death by natural causes. But he was drawing a moral equivalence
between taking the life of the innocent in the womb and taking the life of the
guilty. This is a false equivalence and
certainly contrary to the teaching of Scripture.
It is true that Scripture
teaches us to safeguard human life. This
is evident in the sixth commandment, forbidding murder (Ex. 20:13) and other
passages requiring us to guard against causing death by careless or negligent
behavior (e.g. Deut. 22:8). But
Scripture also warrants the taking of human life in cases of self-defense (Ex.
22:2), war[7],
and capital crimes (e.g., Ex. 21:12-14).
Science & Technology
Some people make a god of
science by adopting it as an epistemological principle that whatever is not capable
of being studied by the scientific method is nonexistent. Everything must be understood in terms of
what science can tell us about it. In
this case, science becomes absolute, and it implies a whole philosophy and worldview
(naturalism). Related to this is the
assumption some people make that if something is technologically possible, then
its morally permissible (artificial insemination; surrogacy; cloning; genetic
manipulation; etc.)
Democracy
It’s been said that
democracy is like two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Commitment to democracy as
an absolute principle is ultimately self-defeating. Must the will of the majority be accepted,
for example, if the demos votes to abolish democracy and establish some other
form of government? Some Muslims in the
West, for instance, have suggested that the democratic process should be used
for just such a purpose—to replace democracy with a Caliphate (sharia)
Equality
Is equality a good
thing? It depends on what you mean by it. If you mean equal treatment under the law,
i.e., protection of basic human rights, a guarantee of due process, recognizing
the principle of “innocent until proven guilty”, etc., then yes, by all means,
let’s have it. But should we seek equality
of outcome? Certainly not. Because to ensure equality of outcome we must
treat people unequally under the law. Some
people are naturally more talented, work harder, take greater risks, invest
more time and money, or act with greater wisdom than others. They tend to enjoy a greater level of
prosperity as a result. It would be
unjust to deprive them of the fruit of their labor by forcibly redistributing
it to others who didn’t take the same risks or make the same sacrifices or act
with the same degree of wisdom.
Conclusion
Each of the things mentioned
above has its value, but none of them can be taken without qualifications or
exceptions. But who defines these
qualifications and exceptions? Who sets
the limits? Who establishes their proper
boundaries? It is, of course, God
himself. Nothing can be considered
absolute except God himself and his Word.
He created all things, and he defines all things. Allegiance to him is the only permissible
absolute. This we can say—and this we must say—without any exceptions or
qualifications. There must be nothing
that limits our allegiance to him. No
person, property, party, or principle must be allowed take precedence over him
and what he has told us in his word.
“Little children, keep
yourselves from idols.”
1 John 5:21
[1] The
Greek word translated here as “serve” (douleuō)
frequently has God as its object (Matt. 6:24 and par. Lk. 16:13; Acts 20:19;
Rom. 7:6, 25; 12:1; 14:18; 16:18; Col. 3:24; 1 Th. 1:9).
[2]
“Every absolutization of what is relative points at the deification of what has
been created.” Herman Dooyeweerd, The Roots of Western Culture: Pagan,
Secular, and Christian Options (Paideia Press, 2012), p. 13
[3]
Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical
Law (Philipsburg, NJ: The
Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1973), p. 4
[7] Provided,
of course, that the motive for war and the means used in waging it are
just. The Biblical principles are not
easily proof-texted, but the fact that the Lord himself often commanded Israel
to go to war or promised his blessing and help when they were attacked (Ex.
23:27-33; Deut. 1:30; 20:4; etc.), demonstrates that waging war is not
inherently evil.
Comments