Contemporary Idolatry

Midweek Encounter 2.9.14

Contemporary Idolatry

Imagine that you recently made a new friend, and he or she invites you over on Friday night. You show up at 7:00 and pull into the driveway and notice that your friend has two enormous graven images parked in the garage. A bit weird, but perhaps this friend is an artist. You enter the house, and everywhere you look you see polished and stacked stones, golden figures, and ornate woodcarvings. Your 21^st century brain requires a few minutes to reconcile what you see with what you know, but as you look about, there can be no mistake: your friend’s house is full of idols.

Now imagine that you and I are friends and I invite you over for dinner. And by “dinner”, I mean that I invite you over for Hot-n-Readys. Not such a stretch, probably. Imagine that you pull into my driveway and you see two newish cars parked in the garage. Maybe two “prudent” choices that announce to the world that we’re not rich but we’re not sacrificing too much, either. I greet you at the door and you notice a sizable shoe collection in the wicker bins to your right. These are my kids’ shoes. Mine are stashed in several closets of several rooms and I have to change them out seasonally because my foyer can’t store them all. You step into the living room. Nothing really seems out of the ordinary—photos of the kids adorn nearly every vertical space in the house, thirty or fifty toys might be strewn about, the kids’ bookshelf is literally overflowing. Nothing in my house is particularly fetching, but nothing is in as state of disrepair, either. Well, the railing along the stairs was broken for a bit, but my step-brother-in-law, Ben, screwed it back into the studs one day when he was babysitting my kids. Not bad for $10/hour.

Modern day idolatry is a bit slippery. Because although I would doubt that you have a golden calf or an Asherah pole on your mantel, you might have some lovely photos of your family, or perhaps 60” of HD entertainment. And don’t worry, that might be 100% ok. Your heart knows the answer.

There’s this story about the Israelites in the book of Gideon. The Israelites “did evil in the eyes of the Lord”, which they loved to do, apparently, and for seven years they suffered at the hands of the Midianites. The Israelites had nothing, and whatever they tried to have was utterly destroyed by the Midianites. Eventually, after their homes and farms and wealth were oppressed year after year after year, Israel finally cried out to the Lord. The story records these events very carefully: “The Israelites cried out to the Lord because of Midian.” Not because they were repentant over making their homes, their wealth, or their farms their idols, and not because they were repentant for worshipping Baal, but because someone else kept taking their stuff. They cried out, “Lord, the Midianites keep taking all of my things. Do something!” And God responded, of course, that he was doing something. He’s always doing something. He was teaching them to rely on Him, to make him their only priority, and they were having none of it. So year after year, their oppression continued. 

Eventually, an angel of the Lord comes to Gideon and tells him that it’s time for deliverance, but first, God demands obedience. Gideon was told to cut down his father’s alter to Baal and to build an alter to Yaweh on top of it. He does so, at pretty great peril to himself.

Sometimes, when I look around my house, I wonder if God is going to send a messenger to tell me to tear down the photos of my family from my walls and to burn them on an alter of the Lord. How many times do we young families skip out on church obligations or service in God’s kingdom and use the excuse of our families? For me, the family is the easiest idol to create and maintain. A close contender for many modern day Christians is probably work or possessions or reputation or popularity. It wouldn’t be pretty, but imagine if God demanded us to sacrifice our idols to him—our promotions or reputations or vacations. Of course he does demand that we maintain no idols, but he extends to us a whole lot of grace, which is to say time, to figure out how to put the first things first. And most importantly, of course, he sacrificed himself as atonement for all of our unfaithfulness and idolatry.