Idolatry is Popular

 

Idolatry is incredibly popular in the Church, incredibly popular.

Perhaps the most prominent example I am seeing all over the place is the churches that venerate at best, but actively align with and even idolize at worst, the nation of Israel. The devotion of many modern evangelicals to this secular and godless nation is remarkable, and in some cases borders on the relic worship of the ancient Church. Those who will fly the star of Remphan[1] (Acts 7:42-43, c.f. Amos 5:25-27) next to the cross are numerous in the Church. But this is only one example of a much larger problem, it would be unfair to single this out as the only example in the Church.

Some idolize wealth or the wealthy. I heard someone say once that they could not go to a church where the pastor was renting his house, because this spoke to them that God was not blessing their household. But Jesus had nowhere to lay his head (Matt. 8:20), and I have known many faithful men of God, some of them dedicated and godly pastors, who had very few pennies to their name, and did not own a home. There have been countless such men of God in history. Our Lord calls us to be willing to sacrifice, and this can look very different for different Christians in this world, yet God is still blessing them. To tie home ownership, or wealth, to being such an important metric of God’s blessing is to place money on too high a pedestal, for many it is truly is an idol.

Some Christians idolize power and the powerful and align themselves with this or that political party. Not because the current candidate represents Christian and Kingdom values, and is going to combat the evil elites who oversee our modern western nations, but because they are with team green or team blue[2]…wait this is the 21^st century, so it is team red or team blue. It is disturbing how little discernment some Christians have, just because a politician is wearing the right political colours, or the wrong ones. Some of these Christians are blind to criticism of this, and in fact become rather hostile to anyone who does criticize this. Yet did Jesus side with the Pharisees, Sadduccess, or Essenes, the dominant political/religious parties of his day? Of course not, and he was willing to receive anyone into his fold from any camp that repented of their evil ways, and he held everyone to the same standard of truth. But this team choosing can become a real idol.

In the conservative evangelical world intellectualism is another idol. This can manifest in a variety of ways; credentialism, associationism (being associated with the right class of people, rather than the right quality of people), sycophantism; that is seeking to be approved by the right cultural elites, an over emphasis on conceptual theology, rather than practical theology, and in many other ways. Idolatry can strangle the Church in many forms.

Then there is literal Icon worship, literal-old fashioned-straight-out-of-the-Old-Testament-handbook-of-what-idolatry-looks-like, kind of idolatry. This is not unheard of at all in today’s world, and occurs both in Protestant and Non-Protestant denominations. Here is something interesting about this phenomenon recorded by Charles Oman in his work The History of the Byzantine Empire,

“Image-worship and relic-worship in particular had developed with strange rapidity, and assumed the shape of mere Fetishism. Every ancient picture or statue was now announced as both miraculously produced and endued with miraculous powers. These wonder-working pictures and statues were now adored as things in themselves divine: the possession of one of them made the fortune of a church or monastery, and the tangible object of worship seems to have been regarded with quite as much respect as the saint whose memory it recalled. The freaks to which image-worship led were in some cases purely grotesque; it was, for example, not unusual to select a picture as the godfather of a child in baptism, and to scrape off a little of its paint and produce it at the ceremony to represent the saint. Even patriarchs and bishops ventured to assert that the hand of a celebrated representation of the Virgin distilled fragrant balsam. The success of the Emperor Heraclius in his Persian campaign was ascribed by the vulgar not so much to his military talent as to the fact that he carried with him a small picture of the Virgin, which had fallen from heaven!

All these vain beliefs, inculcated by the clergy and eagerly believed by the mob, were repulsive to the educated laymen of the higher classes. Their dislike for vain superstitions was emphasized by the influence of Mahometanism on their minds. For a hundred years the inhabitants of the Asiatic provinces of the empire had been in touch with a religion of which the noblest feature was its emphatic denunciation of idolatry under every shape and form. An East-Roman, when taunted by his Moslem neighbour for clinging to a faith which had grown corrupt and idolatrous, could not but confess that there was too much ground for the accusation, when he looked round on the daily practice of his countrymen.

Hence there had grown up among the stronger minds of the day a vigorous reaction against the prevailing superstitions. It was more visible among the laity than among the clergy, and far more widespread in Asia than in Europe. In Leo the Isaurian this tendency stood incarnate in its most militant form, and he left the legacy of his enthusiasm to his descendants. Seven years after the relief of Constantinople he commenced his crusade against superstition. The chief practices which he attacked were the worship of images and the ascription of divine honours to saints—more especially in the form of Mariolatry. His son Constantine, more bold and drastic than his father, endeavoured to suppress monasticism also, because he found the monks the most ardent defenders of images; but Leo's own measures went no further than a determined attempt to put down image-worship.

The struggle which he inaugurated began in a.d. 725, when he ordered the removal of all the images in the capital. Rioting broke out at once, and the officials who were taking down the great figure of Christ Crucified, over the palace-gate, were torn to pieces by a mob. The Emperor replied by a series of executions, and carried out his policy all over the empire by the aid of armed force.

The populace, headed by the monks, opposed a bitter resistance to the Emperor's doings, more especially in the European provinces. They set the wildest rumours afloat concerning his intentions; it was currently reported that the Jews had bought his consent to image-breaking, and that the Caliph Yezid had secretly converted him to Mahometanism. Though Leo's orthodoxy in matters doctrinal was unquestioned, and though he had no objection to the representation of the cross, as distinguished from the crucifix, he was accused of a design to undermine the foundations of Christianity. Arianism was the least offensive fault laid to his account. The Emperor's enemies did not confine themselves to passive resistance to his crusade against images. Dangerous revolts broke out in Greece and Italy, and were not put down without much fighting. In Italy, indeed, the imperial authority was shaken to its foundations, and never thoroughly re-established. The Popes consistently opposed the Iconoclastic movement, and by their denunciation of it placed themselves at the head of the anti-imperial party, nor did they shrink from allying themselves with the Lombards, who were now, as always, endeavouring to drive the East-Roman garrisons from Ravenna and Naples.

The hatred which Leo provoked might have been fatal to him had he not possessed the full confidence of the army.”[3]

Opposition to praying to, or venerating Icons, venerating Mary, and opposing the Popes of Rome, are generally thought of as Protestant criticisms of Catholicism, but this rejection of blatant idol worship has a long history in the Church reaching back into ancient times.

It is not hard to see why. The Ten Commandments tell us straight up,

“1 And God spoke all these words, saying,

2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Ex. 20:1-6).

This commandment does not leave any wiggle room here, but find such wiggle room the Church often has in history. Which is remarkable, so much of the ministry of the Old Testament prophets was dedicated to challenging the idols of Israel and Judah, and even though this was their faithful duty, they were often hated for it. The Baals and Asherah’s were popular in ancient Israel, and one thing that people forget is that at times the Israelites were seeking to represent the God of heaven through their Icons; their statues and idols. So this idolatry ran deep and even took a veneer of orthopraxy on some occasions. It was almost a futile attempt for the prophets to attack these idols, and even still today in the nation of Israel one of the most ancient symbols of one of these chief false gods, who goes by many names, is the symbol of their nation,

25 “Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? 26 You shall take up Sikkuth your king, and Kiyyun your star-god—your images that you made for yourselves, 27 and I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,” says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts” (Amos 5:25-27, emphasis added).

“42 But God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets:

“‘Did you bring to me slain beasts and sacrifices,
    during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
43 You took up the tent of Moloch
    and the star of your god Rephan,
    the images that you made to worship;
and I will send you into exile beyond Babylon’” (Acts 7:42-43, emphasis added).

The open worship of idols died off in some measure after Israel return from Babylon, but it did not disappear, and Jesus and others criticized the leaders in Israel in the New Testament for worshipping false gods. This example here is from Stephen, the deacon. Idol worship was powerful and popular in ancient Israel, and those who criticized it were much more likely to be persecuted than heeded. For every Josiah or Hezekiah, there was countless Ahabs. Some like to credit ancient Israel with the invention of monotheism, but the reality is that the majority of ancient Israelites were never monotheistic. Even Aaron set up an idol when Moses was gone for too long on the mountain. Monotheism was something God was trying to teach Israel, not something Israel was trying to teach the world.

But this penchant for idolatry continued into the age of the New Covenant Church, as is evidenced by the efforts of Leo the Isaurian to try and stamp it out in the early medieval era. This made him very unpopular, and future Byzantine historians, who supported the veneration of Icons, did not reflect on his reign very favourably because of his goal of getting rid of Icon worship. We Protestants see in him a kind of kindred spirit, he even went after Mariolatry. But his people fought against him, the Popes fought against him (which doesn’t surprise many of us), the monasteries fought against him. If he had not had the full support of the army because of his victories against the Saracens, he might have been removed from power by various conspirators.

Idolatry is incredibly popular, and incredibly hard to stamp out. Leo had the power of the Byzantine Imperial throne behind him, and the full support of a large section of the Church leadership, and the army, and he faced incredible backlash and opposition. The reason for this is that people come to identify with their idols. They see in their idols something of themselves, something that speaks of their identity and their values, and all that they see as good, and they see an attack on their idols as an attack on themselves. This is why there is such an irrational reaction among many, even prominent Christians, over what is happening in Israel, because many of these Christians identify with Israel, they see in it the hand of God, and they perceive criticism of it as an attack on themselves and their God, when it is nothing of the sort. This is also why many Christians have strange views about money, because it is their master and they worship it. This is why when you criticize whatever idols otherwise very rational people worship, they respond in incredibly irrational ways at times. That which we hold to emotionally we struggle to think about rationally. It is part of our nature. 

Calvin once said that the human heart is a factory of idols, this means that all of us fall into idolizing things, whether sports, movies, movie stars, singers, etc. This cannot be denied. But this should not stop us from pulling down the obvious idols that we see. One way that we can identify an idol is when somebody is willing to compromise on many of their own values and beliefs to defend it. Or to put it another way, when they are willing to be thoroughly inconsistent with how they view one thing, as compared to others. Or, when an otherwise incredibly rational person gets incredibly emotional when something is challenged. Sometimes this is just because they have not thought through an issue clearly, and they default to an emotional response. Other times it is because you have hit an idol in their hearts, and this makes people reflexively upset and defensive.

All Christian leaders should be perceptive enough to identify idols, and bold enough to challenge those who worship them. But don’t expect thanks for doing so, if you are going to criticize something that people are emotionally invested in, some of those people will hate you for it. After all, the human heart is a factory of idols, and idols lead people into unchristian behaviour.

List of References

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[1] Many Christians are not aware of the pagan roots of the Star of David, even though many Israelis are aware of this themselves. Below is a short explanation of the origins of this star, going only so far, of course, we know that the Bible tells us the origin of the association of this star with ancient Israel, it was a symbol of their rejection of God. https://blog.nli.org.il/en/star-of-david/

[2] These were famous sporting teams in the ancient Eastern Roman Empire, that often got involved in political and religious matters.

[3] Oman, Charles. The History of the Byzantine Empire: From Its Glory to Its Downfall (pp. 97-99). e-artnow. Kindle Edition.