"A Perpetual Forge of Idols"
Some wit once observed, “In the beginning God created man in his own image; and man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.” [1] This is a humorous way of making the point that Calvin made in his Institutes : “The human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols.” [2] The advantage the first saying has over the second is the addition of the fact that the idols men forge tend to look an awful lot like their forgers. This is true, not only with respect to the false conceptions people have of the Father, but also of the Son. Not finding the real Jesus (the one presented to us in the pages of Scripture) much to their liking, they refashion him into their own image. They don’t like Jesus as he is , and so they imagine him to be what he is not. This imaginary Jesus, not surprisingly, is one who happens to agree with them and endorse their agenda. Thus, we find Jesus re-imagined as a woman, as a homosexual, as an animal rights activist, as a card-carrying Democr...