October 2009 Pastor's Highlander Column

October 2009
Pastor’s Column

Brothers and sisters,

In America’s current social and political climate, especially in the last two to three years, we have seen and heard a great many discussions revolving around the twin questions of whether and to what extent the United States is or is not a “Christian nation.”

Loud assertions are heard from all comers. Some contend that we are a firmly Christian nation rooted in Biblical faith and morality and that we should always remain such, while others argue with equal passion that, while we may possess a strong religious background, we were founded as a nation upon purely secular principles and that we should firmly resolve to keep it that way.

This is significant for us as a jumping off point for our current discussion of the Ten Commandments. As we wade deeper into these waters with the first part of a study on the Second Commandment (“You shall not make any graven or carved idols”) we, as both Christians and Americans, truly need to investigate what it means to engage in idolatry and discern how and why even we are guilty of this incredibly serious and dangerous sin.

Last month we closed our discussion of the First Commandment with the observation that we must “allow and put no other gods in our lives. The one we have is enough. He fulfills all things in Himself. Yahweh is the Eternal Word. All other things proceed from serving Him alone.” This concept or principle is the key bridge between that study and this. And it leads to a set of uncomfortable self-diagnostic questions:

• What are our idols and how do we go about carving them?

• How many things do we substitute for Almighty God and His supreme place in our lives?

• Where do we find or manufacture these idols?

As the Body of Christ, we all to often mistakenly assume that we are a “truly Christian country” and that we, especially as Christians, don’t really have much to worry about with regard to this commandment. Our quick mental answers to these questions probably run something like “Oh, I guess that they could be purchased from certain religious curio shops or temples in India or Burma or some such.”

Such answers widely miss the mark though, because idols and idolatry are not relegated only to “pagan nations and peoples” in other places. The cold reality is that they are found in every heart, mind and soul under heaven.

The very reason god forbids us from constructing such idols and false gods is because He knows full well that we will do precisely that. We are all Fallen and sinful, and as the Reformer John Calvin observed, “we are all idolorum fabricum, or idol factories”.

We humans are a contentious and proud bunch who are not content to allow God to be God. Though He has “engraved” His own image upon our hearts and souls (Genesis 1:26-27), we feel the need to return the favor. Everyday we, as both individuals and communities, attempt the impossible as we try to improve upon His nature, plan and design. And we do all of this despite the fact that His existence and unity are very well known to us in creation itself. God, and God alone, is One. He alone is the Creator and Supreme Monarch of all that exists. He created it by His own Word from nothing.

Scripture consistently and repeatedly tells us that such knowledge is integrally implanted in every human heart, mind and soul. We know that God is god, and yet we deny the truth and power of this knowledge. We feel the need to imagine, create and offer ourselves to other gods of our own making because we bristle under God’s easy yoke and constraint. We prefer to fashion physical, mental and spiritual idols of null authority, power and value. And when we do this we sell and indenture ourselves into harsh and perpetual slavery to them.

And this is what the world, and to often we, too, see and call "Genuine Freedom."

We see the effects of such idolatry all the time. As we attempt to “re-imagine” God according to the blueprints of our temptations and desires, we also refuse to acknowledge His image engraved on and implanted in us. Basically, we’ve all taken the collective pledge to join the Frank Sinatra Club: “We do it Our Way! ” We picture God the way we want; we worship the way we want; we behave the way we want — and all so our lives will be “more pleasing,” our worship “more enjoyable and fulfilling,” or “more spiritual and inspirational.” In short, we as a race of creatures continually seek after the warm and fuzzy Smurf-like god of our own fashioning.

It is the first temptation that led to our un-doing, and still we seem unable to resist it. In fact, the temptation Satan offers to Eve in the Garden of Eden is that very one: “Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” (Gen. 3:4&5)

Regrettably, this way leads through a moral swamp in which our feet, hearts and minds are sucked down into the slime and our immortal souls are defaced and devalued. “It is the way that is broad and leads to death, destruction and damnation.”

The proof of this situation is literally “all around us”. We can see the results of our individual and corporate idolatry in microcosm by looking no further than the 100 years of the 20th Century:

• Muslim Turks murdered millions of Christian Armenians during World War I so they could rid the world of “inferior people” practicing an “inferior religion”. The world largely forgot or ignored the infamy.

• Josef Stalin engineered The Ukranian Famine that killed 10 million people as the “collective punishment” of a “collective treason.” The “crime” they committed was un-armed resistance to forced collectivization of their farms.

• In the 1930s and 40s Hitler’s Nazi Reich slaughtered between 7.5 and 10 million Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Christians and other dissidents. Tens of millions of Chinese, Koreans and others were similarly slaughtered by Imperial Japan.

• Untold millions more perished in the gulags and re-education centers of Communist China between the Chinese Civil War and the present.

• ∙ The last 40 years lie witness to numerous further wars of extermination in Cambodia, Laos, Yugoslavia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and the Sudan.

In an earlier and less “politically correct” time we would have referred to this collective loss of probably 50 to 75 million people as their being sacrificed to the false god Molech. In many ways that would be a supremely accurate characterization. They died in blood and fire as sacrifice to the false gods of ideology, hatred, religious, ethnic or political purity, or, worse yet simple expedience.

The false gods constructed by human hands, hearts and minds inevitably lead to death and the destruction of God's handiwork. It is yet another example of the product of the functional atheism of which we have been speaking throughout the past two studies. Atheism creates a vacuum of belief, and because nature abhors a vacuum, falsehood and perversity fill the void. And, finally, creation of counterfeit gods inevitably leads to the worship of them.

This is the evil, ugly and real truth. It is the end product of our idolatry.

The perceived freedom we gain from overthrowing the holy, righteous and gracious God of all creation will always be illusory and lead to real slavery to sin and death. God created us according to His own will and with His purpose. We can try to evade those, but in doing so we unfailingly exchange genuine freedom within created servanthood for a false sense of well-being and freedom under the very real bondage to demonic false gods. And, as we can see, the results and consequences of such false worship are uniformly tragic.

This is a theme that C.S. Lewis hits upon in a discussion of theories of penal punishment and corrections. If there is no God, or some other god than the one who extends healing, re-birth and re-creation, then correction and punishment are endless and brutal. If one truly believes that the God of the Bible is God, then one makes allowance for grace and repentance. Other systems and theories do not. The best that can truly be hoped for is outward compliance and conformity. And the attempts to bring it about are virtually endless. Forgiveness, rebirth and transformation take place in a heart-beat. Re-education and Corrections may never stop until one is utterly broken or has learned to properly recite the correct answers every time without deviation.

Now that we have looked to the nature of the problem before us, we have set the stage for our continued discussion next month when we will look more deeply at God’s nature, His universal claim upon us and the empowerment He gives to us through Christ’s completed work of redemption and the abiding presence and intercession of the Holy Spirit.

In the mean time, let us look more systematically at the packed closets and dusty attics of our hearts, minds and souls so that we can identify and destroy the idols in our lives that struggle against God’s ultimate love and dominion.

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Rusty+