St. Aidan’s Sermons
Winnipeg, Manitoba
The Rev. Canon Dr. Brett Cane, February 20, 2011
Epiphany 7; 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. Holy Communion
The Ten Commandments #2: “Idolatry”
Deuteronomy 4:15-20; Psalm 115:1-11; Romans 1:18-25; Matthew 5:27-32
Prayer:
Heavenly Father, you have taught us that we are not to worship false gods; teach us now, by your Holy Spirit, how that must impact our lives so we might live in the freedom won through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.
Introduction
We have just begun our sermon series on the Ten Commandments and have come to the second commandment, “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below” (Exodus 20:4). Idolatry is a major topic of the Old Testament, but you might be thinking, “What relevance can that have for twenty-first century people in the Western World?” That’s a good question; I don’t think there are too many pagan temples in Winnipeg and I’m sure no one here can remember the last time there was a Golden Calf Worship Service! But seriously, we just don’t have many graven images around us these days…or do we?
What I want to show you this morning is the sad news that we are all idolaters in every sense of the word. We will look at how the Scriptures show that the root of idolatry is falsehood and the result of idolatry is addiction. We are all involved to some degree in self-deception and unhealthy behaviours. That is the bad news. But I also have good news to share – I will describe the healing process which can release us from idolatry by renouncing our modern day idols, repenting and being restored into a right relationship with the Lord.
Following on from last week, we remember that God’s commandments are set in the context of his love and designed to set us free to do right. They are our “Guardian,” leading us to Jesus because we can not live the Law apart from his forgiveness and new life in the Spirit. They are our “Maker’s Instructions” revealing God’s will and design for how life is to be lived. With this understanding, we now embark upon our exploration of “Idolatry.” I am going to describe our modern-day idols in a moment but first we need to look at the nature of idolatry, what is at its root and how it results in addictive behaviour.
The Root of Idolatry – Falsehood
Last week, when we looked at the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3) we saw that Original Sin was not disbelief in God but distrust of God – that he doesn’t have our best interests at heart. The Devil’s temptation was, “Did God really say…?…You will not surely die…You will be like God” (Genesis 3:1, 4, 5). The contradiction of God’s command and the resulting chaos was achieved through lies. Humanity has believed a lie about God – that he is against us, that he does not have our best interests at heart, that he does not love us. And so we have taken matters into our own hands. We have believed a lie about ourselves – that we are gods, that we are omnipotent, “knowing what is good and evil”, that we are the ones who decide what is right and wrong, what is truth. (Today’s “what’s true for you isn’t necessarily what’s true for me” is really blasphemy – there is only one absolute truth). The result has been chaos – for ourselves, for others, for God’s world
So, in Romans 1, Paul links idolatry with falsehood: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of human beings who suppress the truth by their wickedness…They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:18, 25). Idolatry is the substitution of something else for God. An idol is thus not just a physical object that we bow down to or worship but anything that replaces God in our lives as the chief object of our worship and love. At the root of idolatry is the lie that some thing, some person, or some process can meet our deep need for fulfillment and wholeness other than God himself. Thus we are deceived about both God and ourselves.
But the lie extends beyond ourselves and God; it extends to the very things – good in themselves – that we misuse in this idolatrous process. Bishop Tom Wright comments,[1] “Idols are all a perversion of the good. For example, sex is good, under God’s design and plan. As an idol, it is degraded, and enslaves us.” I had often wondered why, in Romans 1, Paul moves so quickly from idolatry to sexuality: “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another” (verse 24). I then heard a most helpful explanation from Leanne Payne.[2] She explained that God, as Creator, is at the centre of Creation. However, if you remove him from his rightful place, as Paul describes here, you are left with a vacuum at the centre of Creation which is filled by procreation. Thus, one of the first things that gets distorted when we deny God his rightful place is our sexuality. The evidence for this is clearly seen in the role that perverted sexuality has in many nature religions such as those of the nations in Canaan that Israel was to displace and in the depravities of humanity in general today – including our own hearts. Idolatry is also based on lies about the good things of the world God has given us.
Falsehood – lies about God, ourselves and the world around us – is at the root of idolatry.
The Results of Idolatry – Addiction[3]
Because idolatry is rooted in falsehood it produces a false way of living. “The Bible teaches that we not only dishonour God with our idols, but we also lose our true humanity.”[4] We heard this in Psalm 115:4, 8: “Their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands…Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.” Jeremiah tells us: “They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves” (Jeremiah 2:5b). When we exchange the truth of God for a whole series of pernicious modern day lies and worship and serve created things rather than the Creator this has deep results within our lives.
In his novel, Out of the Silent Planet[5], C.S. Lewis uses powerful imagery to describe the effects of our idolatry. In his terminology, we become “bent” – grasping and clutching after the things of this world. This is in contrast to the vertical posture intended for us; that of reaching upwards to come into relationship with God. This “bentness” is revealed by the addiction that develops within us when we engage in idolatry. Gerald May elaborates on the connection between idolatry and addiction in his excellent book, Addiction and Grace:[6]
Addiction is a…self-defeating force that abuses our freedom and makes us do things we really do not want to do…addiction attaches desire, bonds and enslaves the energy of desire to certain specific behaviour, things or people. These objects of attachment then become preoccupations and obsessions; they come to rule our lives…Addiction also makes idolaters of us all, because it forces us to worship these objects of attachment, thereby preventing us from truly, freely loving God and one another.
Idolatry is the spiritual dimension of addiction. But when we speak about addiction, we react with denial. Our first response, typical of the addict, is to say, “It doesn’t apply to me.” We are more comfortable thinking of the junkie lying in a ditch or some other more remote manifestation of addiction.
To break through this denial response, we need to look at some of the common forms of addiction that lead to modern day idolatry. These fall into four main categories: substances, processes, relationships, and ourselves.
1. Substances: Looking first at the addiction to substances, we see the obvious ones such as narcotics, alcohol, tobacco and various prescription drugs. There are also less-obvious ones such as eating disorders and the addiction to a number of over-the-counter drugs. The list goes on and on.
2. Processes: None of these apply to you? Let’s look at processes. These are such things as excessive or obsessive engagement in the following: exercising, watching T.V., computer games, sports, sex, working, making money, spending money, gambling and pornography. Of course, except for the last two items there is nothing wrong in these things in and of themselves. However, all of these processes share in common the capacity to become the central and therefore idolatrous focus of their practitioners’ lives. One of my issues is work – I try to use it to give me a sense of self-worth that at its root can only come from God. I also heard of a man who, when he became a Christian, gave up baseball. Not that there is anything wrong with baseball – but that it had become the supreme preoccupation in his life, taking the place where God needed to be.
3. Relationships: What about relationships? Again, to the extent that they become the predominant objects of our attention, relationships can indeed become strongly addictive and therefore idolatrous in nature. This category involves our relationships to organizations, institutions, nations, ideas, even the church as well as our relationships with people – our spouses, children, parents and others. I have seen many situations where a parent – usually a mother – has made a child their idol, resulting in immense damage to the children. The body of literature visible in any bookstore today on the subjects of dysfunctional families and co-dependency attests to the wide-ranging nature of such bent relationships. Being created in the image of God, we are in a way the closest substitute to God on this earth. Therefore, it is somewhat natural that we fall into addictive and idolatrous relationships, in a sense making gods and goddesses of one another.
4. Ourselves: This brings us to the fourth, and most encompassing area of idolatry – ourselves. This can be the greatest addiction of them all – we can be preoccupied with our self-image, thinking either we are God’s gift to the world or that we have no value at all. Self-preoccupation can often be the most powerful concern of our lives.
But there is more! What I have just described are the idols we see on the surface – the presenting addictions that mask deeper needs that only God can meet. Timothy Keller, in our Lenten book, Counterfeit Gods,[7] lists four “deep idols”:
1. Power (control and influence over others)
2. Approval (appreciation and acceptance)
3. Comfort (emotional and physical)
4. Security (control of environment)
These serve as the “fuel” which “fires up” our surface addictions and idols; they are the “hooks” to which they attach. For example, making money our idol can be fuelled by a desire to exercise influence and power over others or gain access to social circles that will make us look beautiful and attractive. Then again, we can amass money in an attempt to control our lives and our world, to give us either comfort and/or security. Dealing with our surface idols alone will not help address these deeper issues. Here is where the battle over “who is in the driver’s seat” takes place.
So that’s the bad news. Idolatry is not just the problem of the ancient Israelites; rather, we are all bowing down to idols in this age as we worship the objects of our addictions to substances, processes, relationships, and ultimately, ourselves – fuelled by the deeper level idols of our hearts of power, approval, comfort and security. As with the ancient Israelites, our sin leads to punishment – we become enslaved to our addictions and idols which results in disorder and turmoil in our lives and spills over into our society and environment.
The Release from Idolatry
So what about some good news? How can we be released from a life of addiction and idolatry? By listening to God’s call to us to give up a life centred on our idols and to return to him, our King and Creator – to worship him alone: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). The good news is that through the cross of Jesus Christ our debts have been paid and our idolatry has been forgiven. We are the redeemed, called into relationship with God. But the idols have to go. How can we turn away from them? We can only do it through him, as his limitless grace and mercy are made available to heal us of our addictions and bring us back to him. In other words, as the Holy Spirit works in us and changes us, even the most powerful addictions can be broken; through him the idols can be cast down. How does all this become a reality in our lives? As I share these five steps, please remember that we can not do them in isolation – we need the support of a loving community – their prayers and counsel.
1. First of all we must want to be healed; we must recognize our need for total dependency on God and not on our own resources. This is a choice to be made which can not be avoided.
2. Then, we must be able to discern and name the idols and addictions of our lives. Importantly, because the first characteristic of addiction is denial, we often don’t recognize these things for what they really are. Therefore, we need to pray to the Holy Spirit to search our hearts and shine light in our inner darkness.
3. Thirdly, we need to renounce them. We need to determine to turn away from them and return to the one true living God.
4. Next, we need to repent of the sin that caused us to worship false gods in the first place. We pray to the Lord to heal the broken places in our hearts, the “hooks” for our addictions – the deeper level idols of power, approval, comfort, and security that predisposed us to sin in the first place
5. This having been done, we are then prepared to receive the blessing of the Holy Spirit: we have a Saviour, Jesus, who takes away the sin of the world and we have the Holy Spirit who lives within us to fill the holes formerly filled by our idols and to empower us to remain in the love of the One who “Betroths us to him for ever” (Hosea 2:19).
Give up your false gods for the True God!
[1] N. T. Wright, New Tasks for a Renewed Church (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1992)
[2] At a Pastoral Care Ministries Conference.
[3] I acknowledge a debt to the Isaiah 40 Foundation’s talk “Idolatry” (originally written by Andy Schonbek, who used material given by Dr. Don Williams, Vineyard pastor and conference speaker) for many of the ideas in these next two sections.
[4] Don Williams, “We Become Like What We Worship,” Jan. 20, 2005, found on http://www.tlchrist.info/worship/become.htm
[5] C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet. (New York: Scribner, 2003)
[6] Gerald May, Addiction and Grace. (New York: Harper Collins, 1988)
[7] Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods. (New York: Penguin Books/Dutton 2009), pgs. 64-66.
