THE FOLLY OF IDOLATRY

Martin Luther said that the human heart is an idol factory.

The truth is that we were created to know and live by the gracious rule of and in the Presence of God who created us. Our peace, our understanding of meaning and purpose can only be truly grounded in God who created us for that meaning and purpose. The rebellion of Adam and Eve, their decision to do the opposite of what God said would make for life, resulted in spiritual and ultimately physical death. They chose to believe they needed something more than what God had provided. Their doomed attempt to try and live life without reference to God as the ground of meaning and purpose did not make life fuller, but emptied it. They wanted to decide what was good and what was evil without God and the disintegration of human life was the consequence.

Rather than living in the Presence of God and by the gracious rule of God all around them, they turned from wholeness to brokenness, from fulfilment to scarcity, from goodness to decay. They began to look to created things to make life purposeful, demanding from creation things it could never supply. They became ego-centric rather than God-centric. Not being the ground of their own lives, they began to fashion gods in their own broken image.

Good things given by God were used in ways that they were never intended to be used. The gifts of God were never meant to replace God Himself. They refused to be thankful because that would have confirmed that they were not self-sufficient. Thus, the goodness God had given as gifts began to be abused and misused as if those “good things” could offer what only God can give.

Idolatry is very subtle. Even good things like family, spouse, children, or even social causes, if loved more than God, if relied upon to give life ultimate meaning and purpose, become idols. If you try and draw life, identity, and purpose from them when life, identity and purpose can only be found in God, then even these good things have become false gods.

You can tell if something has become an idol in life when you become wracked by uncontrollable fear and anger when they are threatened or are consumed by inconsolable despair when they are lost.

Wholeness and true humanity are only found in God Himself. He alone can restore the goodness that has been lost. He alone can cause re-integration, regeneration, and the salvaging of a human soul. God has done what is necessary for us to be restore into Life as He first gave it to humanity. His way of rescue was done through the Life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. You can receive life; life in its all its intended fullness again by believing, surrendering to God the whole of life, receiving forgiveness, and the power to live a new life. We simply cannot do that on our own.