Be The Fruit

Why do we worship idols?

by Bill Blair on 23/10/08 at 5:33 am

To answer this question simply: God made us this way.  I know what you are thinking, God did not create me so that I would worship food, sex, politics, or whatever else.  Such things are sinful, and God does not want us to sin so he could not have created us this way.  To that point I would agree, God did not create us to sin.  What I am saying is that God created not to sin, but to worship and it is this nature that causes us to worship idols rather than God.

You see, when God created us we were designed to worship Him, but this got fouled up when sin entered into the world.  Our desire to worship did not change, but our object of worship did.  When sin entered into the world, man essentially chose to worship anything and everything other than God.  Paul describes this misguided worship below:

“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” (Romans 1:21-25, ESV)

Paul states that people worshiped images of man, birds, and animals then God gave them up to the “lusts of their hearts,” and they “worshiped the creature rather than the Creator.”  This could explain the nature of our idol worship today.  Most don’t seek out images, but all seem to get lost in worship of things rather than God.  Sometimes the worship goes beyond things, to wanting some sort of status or feeling above all else.  I believe that all of our sin involves some time of wrongful worship.  Such wrongful worship causes all kinds of problems.  Wrongful worship shows up a lot in marriages.  Husbands demand respect and wives demand attention or “love.”  Husbands may demand to relax after work and wives may demand a break from the kids.  Respect, love, relaxation, and a break are not bad things in general, but they become objects of wrongful worship when a person is willing to sin to get it or will sin if they don’t get it.

Thinking about this wrongful worship brings me to an aspect of the gospel that is often overlooked.  For most people, the gospel is all about forgiveness of sins, but the reality is the gospel is primarily about fixing this wrongful worship.  When a person believes the gospel he/she is not just accepting a gift of forgiveness, but proclaiming that Christ is truly is God and worthy of worship.  When we accept the gospel we are able to put down our worship of creation and worship the Creator again.  One might say that the forgiveness we receive in Christ is not the end but a means to the end of being able to return to a right relationship with God and worship him forever.

I think it is clear that God created us to worship, and sin did not eliminate this aspect of nature but merely distorted it so that we began to worship creation rather than Creator.  We worship because God made us that way, but our sin causes us to worship idols, and it is only through the Cross that such wrong worship can be corrected.

For some more reading on idols, specifically killing idols, you might check out a new series that Jared Wilson just started up over at searchwarp.com.  Check out the first post here.

Until next time, put God first and “be the fruit.”