Flee From Idolatry

Because we live in a once Christian nation, it can be all too easy to believe that idolatry is no longer practiced. We don’t really see people bowing to idols as we have read in scripture, right?

Sorry, but the sad truth is that idolatry has always been with us and as we turn away from the One true God of scripture, idolatry is even being promoted in once Christian institutions.

Idolatry has been alive and well in the world in many of the world’s leading religions. Buddhists and Hindus are obvious with their golden statues ranging from the very small to the enormous, but Islam is the world’s largest idol worshiping religion as they face Mecca 5 times a day to bow to a black rock.

Unfortunately, Christianity is not free of idols as many practitioners bow to statues of various saints but until recently that practice was largely a Catholic practice that Protestants clearly understood as contrary to the clear teaching of scripture.

More often today we are seeing a return to pagan practices in worshiping creation instead of the Creator as Paul warned:

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

Romans 1:24-25

Increasingly, we see earth worship becoming the religion promoted to replace Christianity, not just in the United States but around the world. The panic over so-called climate change is the primary driver of the new pantheism and its idol worship.

Corporations like NBC news are driving viewers to religious devotion in Gaianism by offering ways to confess their sins. Here is how they put it on Twitter: “Even those who care deeply about the planet’s future can slip up now and then. Tell us: Where do you fall short in preventing climate change? Do you blast the A/C? Throw out half your lunch? Grill a steak every week? Share your anonymous confession with NBC News.”

It is happening in once Christian churches and institutions such as Union Theological Seminary, where they openly worship plants as if they created them. Here’s their idolatrous tweet: “Today in chapel, we confessed to plants,” it began. “Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.” Then they asked for an Amen: “What do you confess to the plants in your life?”

The bible plainly identifies Jesus as the Creator and sustainer of life, not the plant life. It is amazing what people will worship as God including mindless plants that cannot hear much less speak. This is nothing new, of course, people have been cutting down trees and other plant life and either carved a face on it or not and then worshipped it as if it could save them.

Christians must understand that this is happening not only around them but that the world is actively working to get them to join along like Aaron of old.

We should be good stewards of where we live, that is biblical, but we should also understand that this world is temporary will in fact burn up with a fervent heat according to scripture. We should pick up after ourselves and not be wasteful, but we should also focus on what is really important.

Idolatry is an evil that will destroy us if we let it into the true church and that is why we should strive to stay true to biblical doctrine not the empty doctrine this world promotes.

Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture,
And the sheep of His hand.

Today, if you will hear His voice:

Psalm 95:6-7