Yesterday I was sitting in an air conditioned room in a large Thai city, listening to a sermon on Romans. The glass front of the building was to my left, looking out on a parking lot and the main road. On the big screen was a PowerPoint slide of verses 20-23.
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 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.
Romans 1:20-23
“My wife made some pastries this morning,” the preacher said. “We’ll be enjoying them soon. What if I took the pastry and started honoring it? ‘Wow, you’re so amazing and good.’ That would be ridiculous, right? Just like honoring the created pastry instead of the cook, that is what people do to God, the Creator.”
He walked to the glass doors and pointed outside at a shrine across the way. “Look,” he said, “what can I see? Horses, an elephant, a Vishnu, some small images, probably of monks. People worship these things rather than the God who made them.”
I looked at where he was pointing. Without so much as moving from our seats, we as a congregation could simply glance to our left to see objects of veneration with offerings set before them.
In America, I have often sat under teaching and preaching that makes a metaphor out of Bible passages on idolatry. We Christians are often admonished to search our hearts for “idols” in our lives.
As someone who has spent the majority of my life in those regions of the world dominated by real idolatry, I find this to be frustrating, as though the original meaning of these passages is getting clouded by veils of analogy and forced applications.
When you sit in your own yard with the smell of incense lingering in the air, those very passages that preachers stretch to apply to believers suddenly seem to come alive.
When I have my little Sunday Schoolers memorize 1 John 5:21, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols,” it is in the literal sense. The word for “idol” in Khmer is “god-image”.
There may be a place for the “idols of the heart” discussion, but I fear that overemphasis on this can start to cloud the original meaning of so many of these passages in Scripture.
“Can I eat food that has been offered to idols?” a new believer asked me. It was Chinese New Year, and she was going to a gathering with her relatives. One had asked her if she could eat the offerings. I opened to 1 Corinthians 10.
Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? “All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience— I do not mean your conscience, but his. For why should my liberty be determined by someone else’s conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks? So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
1 Corinthians 10:18-31
“So,” I said, “you do not have to ask about the food, and if you eat food that has been offered without knowing, it is not sin, because sin does not come from the food. But if someone tells you that it is food from an offering, than we should not eat it for their sake, to show that we are followers of Jesus, and we do not participate in the worship of idols.”
A Cambodian brother in Christ spoke from Psalm 115.
“Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory,
for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!
Why should the nations say,
“Where is their God?”
Our God is in the heavens;
he does all that he pleases.
Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but do not speak;
eyes, but do not see.
They have ears, but do not hear;
noses, but do not smell.
They have hands, but do not feel;
feet, but do not walk;
and they do not make a sound in their throat.
Those who make them become like them;
so do all who trust in them.”
He said, “Why did I bring up these verses? Because before I received salvation, I was a carver. What did I carve? I carved images of gods. These gods were the work of my hands. But our God is not the work of any man’s hands. Praise the Lord. These verses are so important. We see idols every day, don’t we? Can they talk? Can they get up and walk around here and there? No. Praise the Lord for saving me.”
“Ugh,” said a lady who made and sold cakes, “I had the altar inside, the god shelf for the ancestors, the angel altar outside, the [gods-of-the-house], then there was the god of the village on top of that! I was running around all day offering incense! I would go around saying, ‘Lord Buddha, please help me,’ and I didn’t even know what I was saying.”
“Yes,” added her daughter, who worked in the city government office, “I remember Mom used to put up those [Chinese guardians] posters above and on both sides of the door frame, and every time I had a headache or a fever I’d go offer my respect to them. Oh! I can only laugh at myself now.”
“People will spend over a thousand dollars on a marble image of a god,” said the air con mechanic, “and put it in the [Buddhist] temple. Over a thousand dollars!”
“Go in and cut off an arm or a leg,” the daughter said, “and see if it says anything.”
People laughed.
“I remember back in the time of the bombings, during The War,” the grandma said. “I used to put dirt on my head and ask the god of the earth to protect me.”
“Oh yeah! There’s the god of the earth, the god of the water, what’s the god of the air called again?”
“So many gods! You can’t list them all.”
“Praise the Lord for leading us to know Him.”
“We don’t have to wonder if He is listening to our prayers. We know He is, because He is with us.”
There are idols in temples, in shrines, on altars outside and inside of houses, idols beneath trees and on the hills, literally in “the high places,” and on taxi drivers’ dashboards. They are worn as amulets and dangle from rear-view mirrors. They decorate gardens and roundabouts, and stand towering alongside highways. Outside and inside Catholic churches, idols of Mary, Jesus, and the saints are venerated, eerily similar to the Buddhas inside and outside temples. Once, in a Thai field, I saw idols that were just stones, with drawn-on faces. There was a sense of evil in the air.
Idolatry is very much a real thing today, and it does not just exist in distant countries. In Greenville, SC, where there seems to be a church on every corner, I could find idols inside restaurants and businesses, some a block away from the Bible college.
God saves people out of idolatry. I am a Christian, and I worship Jesus alone. I am not an idolater. I may begin to love the world. My priorities might slide away from Christ. Perhaps I start to love pleasure more than I love God, and I need to turn back to Him and put Him first in my life. But I do not worship images. Pray for those who are in real bondage to idols!
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Thank you for opening my eyes to the magnitude and daily exposures to pagan idols in the cultures around the world and in my own US community. You’re so right. May the Lord continue to give you wisdom, and understanding to show the love of Christ in a blinded culture.