Blogging Ottinger (tim)

I’ve heard a lot of sermons about idolatry. Now, mind you, we don’t see a lot of graven images and polytheistic icons around these days, and never are we told to bow to a golden statue at the blowing of a horn. We’re happy about that. We don’t embrace a state religion (knowing how poorly that has worked in the past). We have freedom of religion, including freedom to change if we find we’re horribly wrong.

So the application is always given that it doesn’t take a physical idol to create idolatry. People can idolize other people, or can idolize money or fame or some other image. The trick is that anything which is loved inordinately (more than The Lord) is an idol in practice even if not in name. Since there is a risk for even devout people the biblical injunction remains relevant. But what about the use of statuary or sacred art or music or imagery for worship? Is that idolatry? And what of non-idol idolatry? This has become a subtle thing, has it not?

One sermon-stuffer is the money test. Where do you spend your money? If you find that the majority of your money goes into your house or your hot cars or wardrobe, then perhaps you are spending more attention on these things than on the work of the kingdom, and therefore are slighting God. Are you giving to God’s work? Well, I think it’s worth considering. On the other hand, if we don’t care for our families, we are “worse than infidels”. We find that we spend most of our money on acquiring and maintaining a home, food, and necessities for our children. If families exist for which this is not the case, I don’t know them. After that, we spend money on our ability to continue making a living for our families. How can we not? These unavoidable things take much of our income. We’re doing as well as we can for our families, and we’re giving our tithes and whatever we can to the church. There is some entertainment, but it’s a lot less than the necessities and giving. I’m not surprised if this is the normal case. There’s not as much discretionary income as we might wish.

Another tried-n-true sermon stuffer is the “time test”. Where do you spend most of your time? If something takes most of your time, is it an idol to you? In tithe, your time would be almost 2 1/2 hours a day. Is that spent in prayer, study, and service? Well, here again we have issues. In everything I do, I find guidance and wisdom from the Bible. I squeeze in prayer in all kinds of funny times and places. Am I not always in worship, or nearly always? But I have to make a living and care for my wife and kids, and that takes time. After that a lot of discretionary time goes to caring for others. I suppose that a guy who spent all of his time on hobbies or career advancement, at the cost of family relationships, could be said to have some trouble with idolatry. But I don’t know how many idolize television and movies and music and hobbies, and I doubt it’s as common as some ministers make it out to be.

Whatever you’ve invested the most in, could it be a God to you? Where do you spend your intellectual and emotional energy? Maybe there’s something to this as well. Do you live for the bigger paycheck? Have you emotionally invested in your hobbies to the detriment of other concerns? Do you spend all of your mental energy on the job and nothing on the study of the Bible and prayer? What is it that you are so invested in that you could barely considering going on without it? Where do all your hopes and dreams go? Is it a person? An institution? A business? A church? A friend or relative (alive or dead) you want desperately to please? Is there anything without which you would rebel against God? Is your devotion conditional upon any thing? Whether a man is wealthy or idle, the question remains “what is everything to you?” Your idol could be your children, your schoolwork, your spouse, your pastor, your ministry job, your secular job, a goal you have set for yourself. This “investment rule” seems to have some weight, regardless of the resources available to you.

Perhaps a god is anything that differentiates right from wrong for you? To some crooked businessmen in the past decade, whatever will build their business is “right” and whatever would not benefit the business was “wrong”. Clearly responsibility is necessary, but if expediency becomes the ethical rule rather than being subject to the ethical rule, then scandal is never far behind. But not all of us are multimillionaire CEOs. Maybe an intent for preservation of a family could cause one to violate all other ethical rules, or protection of a loved one could lead one (otherwises well-intentioned) to lie or steal or hide evidence. It could be even the preservation of a kind of ministry which becomes an idol. It could be an image you maintain regardless of cost. The “ethical basis” rule certainly seems to stand up in modern application. Whatever we do should be done for God, not for our reputation or church or business. Then, when we are divested of everything else, at the end of our lives or in our day of judgement, we can be proud of what we’ve given.

I would offer that true idolatry should be judged by both the rule of emotional investment and the rule of ethical basis. If anything takes supremacy in these two areas, it is clearly a god. If in either of these two areas, obedience to God is eclipsed by loyalty to anything the earth has to offer then there is idolatry. If your obedience and devotion to God are conditioned on some other ethical system or emotional investment (even something intangible like Conservativism or Liberalism), then that thing is an idol to you. And such a god is truly a demon. As C.S. Lewis put it in The Four Loves “When love ceases to be a god, it ceases to be a demon.” This could be said of any idol, could it not? Such a thing could be placed back in its rightful place, subject to the true God, and it would lose its power to drive you against God’s laws and commandments.

Maybe I don’t have the proof texts for this, but please consider these things. The work you do, is it for Creator or for creation? Is there an agenda other than to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God? Something “grander” in your vision than to love The Lord with your heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself? Something that will be revealed in the fire?