Gods That Fail

Vinoth Ramachandra:

The people of the modern West are better fed, better housed, better equipped with health care than those in any previous age in human history. But paradoxically, they also seem to be the most fearful, the most divided, the most superstitious and the most bored generation in human history. All the labor-saving devices of modern technology have only enhanced human stress, and modern life is characterized by restless movement from place to place, from on experience to another, in a frenetic whirl of purposeless activity. 

Gods That Fail: Modern Idolatry and Christian Mission p.12-13

What Idolatry Hath Wrought at Penn State

Rod Dreher, responding to an unpublished op-ed by Joe Paterno claiming that “this is not a football scandal,” writes:

What eluded Paterno, and what is crystal-clear from the Freeh report, is that the quasi-religious reverence with which the football program was held within the culture of the university, and in particular the secular godlike authority granted to Paterno, made this horrifying scandal possible. When the perceived good of the institution (Penn State football) is taken as the absolute end to which everything must direct itself, this is what you get.
If not for the exaltation of Penn State football, Sandusky wouldn’t have had access to his victims. If not for the exaltation of Penn State football, the leadership who discovered his crimes wouldn’t have covered them up and turned a blind eye to them. It was the status of football at Penn State that enabled these crimes and their cover-up. To ignore or to deny that is to willfully fail to deal with reality.

You can read the whole post here.

Justin Taylor

The Idol Factory - Why 1 John Ends with a Command

David Powlison:
The relevance of massive chunks of Scripture hangs on our understanding of idolatry. But let me focus the question through a particular verse in the New Testament which long troubled me. The last line of 1 John woos, then commands us: “Beloved children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).
In a 105-verse treatise on living in vital fellowship with Jesus, the Son of God, how on earth does that unexpected command merit being the final word?
Is it perhaps a scribal emendation?
Is it an awkward faux pas by a writer who typically weaves dense and orderly tapestries of meaning with simple, repetitive language?
Is it a culture-bound, practical application tacked onto the end of one of the most timeless and heaven-dwelling epistles?
Each of these alternatives misses the integrity and power of John’s final words.
Instead, John’s last line properly leaves us with that most basic question which God continually poses to each human heart.
Has something or someone besides Jesus the Christ taken title to your heart’s trust, preoccupation, loyalty, service, fear and delight?
It is a question bearing on the immediate motivation for one’s behavior, thoughts, and feelings. In the Bible’s conceptualization, the motivation question is the lordship question.
Who or what “rules” my behavior, the Lord or a substitute?
The undesirable answers to this question—answers which inform our understanding of the “idolatry” we are to avoid—are most graphically presented in 1 John 2:15-17, 3:7-10, 4:1-6, and 5:19. It is striking how these verses portray a confluence of the “sociological,” the “psychological,” and the “demonological” perspectives on idolatrous motivation.
The inwardness of motivation is captured by the inordinate and proud “desires of the flesh” (1 John 2:16), our inertial self-centeredness, the wants, hopes, fears, expectations, “needs” that crowd our hearts.
The externality of motivation is captured by “the world” (1 John 2:15-17,4:1-6), all that invites, models, reinforces, and conditions us into such inertia, teaching us lies.

The “demonological” dimension of motivation is the Devil’s behavior-determining lordship (1 John 3:7-10,5:19), standing as a ruler over his kingdom of flesh and world.
In contrast, to “keep yourself from idols” is to live with a whole heart of faith in Jesus. It is to be controlled by all that lies behind the address “Beloved children” (see especially 1 John 3:1-3,4:7-5:12). The alternative to Jesus, the swarm of alternatives, whether approached through the lens of flesh, world, or the Evil One, is idolatry.
Justin Taylorhttp://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2011/11/26/why-1-john-ends-with-a-command/

The Idol-Crushing King

Little children keep yourselves from idols (1 John 5:21)*

If the heart of man is, as John Calvin described it, “an idol making factor,” then the way in which those idols are destroyed should be of utmost importance to us. The Bible is replete with references to idolatry because it was written with the purpose of confronting and providing the remedy for it. The idolatry of Israel is evident on the pages of the Old Testament revelation no less than the idolatry of the Gentile nations. No sooner did God deliver His people from the bondage of the idolatrous Egyptians that they made an idol at the foot of the mountain to which He had brought them to worship. The New Testament writers also bear witness to the pervasive sin of idolatry. In his letter to the church in Rome, the Apostle Paul taught that men, by nature, exchange the truth of God for a lie, and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator. He reminded the church in Thessalonica that they had turned to God from idols to serving the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven; and he exhorted the Colossians to put off covetousness, which is idolatry. In similar fashion, the Apostle John closed his first epistle with the admonition: Little children keep yourselves from idols.

Throughout Israel’s history, a recurring act symbolized the means by which God would remove the idolatry of His people. When Moses found the people worshiping the golden calf at the foot of the mountain He took the calf which they had made, burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder. He then scattered it on the water. (Exodus 32:20). When he recounted the act, he explained that he threw the dust of the idol into a nearby brook (Deut. 9:21). The burning, crushing and grinding of the idol represented the judgment of God against sin. The act of throwing the dust of the idol into the brook almost certainly represented the removal of it from the people, as well as from the presence of God. Like the goat being sent into the wilderness, this act prefigured God’s promise to put the sins of His people away from His presence.

Moses’ symbolic act became a paradigm for the subsequent acts of the righteous kings of Israel. Each of these kings removed idols from the land in a manner similar to that of Moses. King Asa cut down the idol that his grandmother set up and burned it by the Brook Kidron. (1 Kings 15:11-13). King Josiah brought out the wooden image from the house of the LORD, to the Brook Kidron outside Jerusalem, burned it at the Brook Kidron and ground it to ashes. He “broke them down and pulverized there, and threw their dust into the Brook Kidron” (2 Kings 23:4-6, 12). Under the reign of King Hezekiah the priests went into the inner part of the house of the LORD to cleanse it, and brought out all the debris that they found in the temple of the LORD and carried it to the Brook Kidron and they took away all the incense altars and cast them into the Brook Kidron. (2 Chronicles 29:16; 30:13).

While these kings are remembered for destroying idols from the land of Israel, none of them could purge the hearts of the people. The righteous kings of Israel may have temporarily purged the land of idols, but King Jesus removes them from our hearts forever. As He made His way to Calvary, Jesus crossed over the Brook Kidron (John 18:1) to symbolize everything He had come to do. He was burnt, crushed and ground by the wrath of God on the cross. Matthew Henry observed:

The godly kings of Judah had burnt and destroyed the idols they found at the brook Cedron. Into that brook the abominable things were cast. Christ, being now made sin for us, that he might abolish it and take it away, began his passion by the same brook.

Jesus Christ is the solution to our idolatry. God the Son took to Himself flesh and blood, so that He might bear the penalty for our idolatry in His own body on the tree. Then He rose bodily from the dead. God the Father now commands us to worship the God-Man, Jesus Christ. By opening his first epistle with a defense of the Person and work of Christ (I John 1:1-2:1) and closing it with the warning, Little children, keep yourselves from idols (5:21), the apostle John taught that Jesus is the cure for our idolatry. Adolphe Monod explained the mystery of this truth in a most profound way:

I strive to live in the communion of Jesus Christ praying to Him, waiting for Him, speaking to Him, hearing Him, and, in a word, constantly bearing witness to Him day and night; all which would be idolatry if He were not God, and God in the highest sense of the word, the highest that the human mind is capable of giving to that sublime name.

What idols are you harboring in your heart? Are you giving affections and labors to created things? How are we to keep ourselves from idols? The remedy is only to be found in the Person and finished work of Christ. He has destroyed the idols of His people, once and for all, by His death on the cross. Our sins have been washed away in His blood. He has cast them into the depths of the sea, even as the righteous Kings casts the crushed idols into the Brook Kindron. Praise God for His righteous King and His righteous rule in our hearts!

 Feeding On Christ

Failure to believe in Justification by Faith is Idolatry

All those who do not at all times trust God and do not in all their works or sufferings, life and death, trust in His favor, grace and good-will, but seek His favor in other things or in themselves, do not keep this [First] Commandment, and practice real idolatry, even if they were to do the works of all the other Commandments, and in addition had all the prayers, obedience, patience, and chastity of all the saints combined. For the chief work is not present, without which all the others are nothing but mere sham, show and pretense, with nothing back of them... If we doubt or do not believe that God is gracious to us and is pleased with us, or if we presumptuously expect to please Him only through and after our works, then it is all pure deception, outwardly honoring God, but inwardly setting up self as a false [savior].... (Part X. XI) Excerpts from Martin Luther, Treatise Concerning Good Works (1520).

Here Luther says that failure to believe that God accepts us fully in Christ—and to look to something else for our salvation—is a failure to keep the first commandment; namely, having no other gods before him. To try to earn your own salvation through works righteousness is breaking the first commandment. Then he says that we cannot truly keep any of the other laws unless we keep the first law—against idolatry and works righteousness. Thus beneath any particular sin is this sin of rejecting Christ-salvation
and indulging in self-salvation.
by Tim Keller, Talking about Idolatry in a Post Modern Age

The Difference Between Sorrow and Despair

There is a difference between sorrow and despair. Sorrow is pain for which there are sources of consolation. Sorrow comes from losing one good thing among others, so that, if you experience a career reversal, you can find comfort in your family to get you through it. Despair, however, is inconsolable, because it comes from losing an ultimate thing. When you lose the ultimate source of your meaning or hope, there are no alternative sources to turn to. It breaks your spirit.

Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, Introduction, pg. x -xi

Glenn Beck and his Americolatry

I thought this was an insightful comment left here on the blog from Paul Ireland—worth highlighting:

In the whole discussion about Mormonism, I think we’re missing a big part of what is going on with Glenn Beck.  The problem is not simply Mormonism.  The problem is idolatry.
People who follow Glenn Beck may not become Mormon and reject the Trinity, but they will likely follow his Americolatry—his worship of our nation.  His view of life rises and falls on the state of our country.  Christians I know who follow Beck quickly get pulled into his idolatrous fervor that declares that our nation can be our savior.
Both the left and the right subscribe to this Americolatry.  If our government does X, Y, and Z, then we will be joyful, satisfied, safe, and complete.  Then we will live in heaven.  But if the other guys get their way, it’ll be hell.  In that equation, God is no longer our joy, our comfort, our satisfaction, our all.  If God is brought into the conversation at all, it is to use God as a means for our own idolatrous ends.  This kind of idolatry is very alluring and dangerous for Christians.

Justin Taylor

Politics As Idolatry: Keller Is Correct

"When love of one's people becomes an absolute, it turns into racism.  When love of equality turns into a supreme thing, it can result in hatred and violence toward anyone who has a privileged life.  It is the settled tendency of human societies to turn good political causes into counterfeit gods."
~ Pastor and Author, Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods
"We can look upon our political leaders as "messiahs," our political policies as saving doctrine, and turn our political activism into a kind of religion."
~ Pastor and Author, Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods

"In my estimation, the key to understanding this phenomenon, and by extension, this race, is recognizing the fact that voters, in the aggregate, are irrational."
~ Blogger Tom Girsch, Lean Left
"While the honor is mine, this Senate seat belongs to no one person, no one political party. This is the people's seat"
~ U.S. Senator Scott Brown, Senator From Massachusetts, in his victory speech to the chants of "People's seat!" 
How do you know when political power has become a counterfeit god?
Tim Keller says to look out for two things.  One, fear becomes one of the chief characteristics of life.  One party wins, and those in the other party start to talk about leaving the country because it is going down the tubes.  Hopelessness.  Powerlessness.  Fear.  Two, "political opponents are not considered to be merely mistaken, but to be evil."  Politics becomes about demonizing the other side.
I don't think it takes a PHD in political science to see that both of those red flags are waving.
Tgirsch calls it irrational.  I agree, but for probably a different reason.  I think it is irrational for anyone to view politics as a cure to solving our problems.  I think voters electing a President whose main issue was "change" and "yes we can" was irrational too.  Change to what?  Yes we can what?  Now, we have "people's seat".  Have we become a nation of chanters?
The key to understanding this phenomenon is not that people are irrational insofar as it goes, but to understanding that politics has become a counterfeit god.  We seek salvation from political leaders and political parties and political doctrines.
This misidentifies the human problem.  The problem is not powerlessness.  The problem is rebellion in the human heart.  The problem is arrogance.  The problem is self-worship and self-focus. The problem is an addiction to self, not powerlessness.  Misidentified problem.  Misidentified solution.
Obama cannot save us.  Scott Brown cannot save us.  Democrats cannot save us.  Republicans cannot save us.
Those are counterfeit gods.  They will only disappoint.
There is only one true God.  Salvation comes from Him alone.
Dawn Treader