bible and theology on Idolatry

Idolatry is worshipping anything that ought to be used, or using anything that is meant to be worshipped.

For what is idolatry if not this: to worship the gifts in place of the Giver himself?

Idolatry is not just a failure to obey God, it is a setting of the whole heart on something besides God.

The heart of all this evil is idolatry itself. It is the de-godding of God.

Martin Luther’s larger catechism discussion of the first commandment (“You shall have no other gods before Me” [Ex 20:3]) included “whatever your heart clings to and relies upon, that is your God; tru...

In his excellent book on the subject of power (Playing God), author Andy Crouch describes the connection between idolatry and addiction: In modern, secular societies perhaps the clearest example of ...

In Easter Everywhere: A Memoir, Darcey Steinke recounts how she, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, left her Christian profession. Moving to New York City she entered a life of club hopping and se...

To have a faith, therefore, or a trust in anything, where God hath not promised, is plain idolatry, and a worshipping of thine own imagination instead of God.

We make a god out of whatever we find most joy in. So find your joy in God and be done with all idolatry.

What many people call “psychological problems” are simple issues of idolatry. Perfectionism, workaholism, chronic indecisiveness, the need to control the lives of others—all of these stem from making ...

The opposite of theism is not atheism, it’s idolatry

One has only the choice between God and idolatry. There is no other possibility. For the faculty of worship is in us, and it is either directed somewhere into this world, or into another.

Two golden rules at the heart of spirituality. You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character o...

Why did Israel create at Sinai a calf idol instead of an image of some other animal? The likely reason is that a calf or bull was among the most important of the Egyptian animal images that represente...

To get overprotective about particular readings of the Bible is always in danger of idolatry.

What the early Christians did not have to deal with to the same extent that we do today is how race has become an idol. On both sides of the racial divide, so much is twisted by the social constructs ...

We are complicit and we do not even realize it, O Holy God. Every day we participate in systems of idolatry, and we promote the captivity of a nation to gods. We have bought the subtle lies of our cul...

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

The heart clings to collected treasure. Stored-up possessions get between me and God. Where my treasure is, there is my trust, my security, my comfort, my God. Treasure means idolatry.

Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected.... Hoarding is idolatry.

Identifying the idols of the city takes place in the untamed context of spiritual warfare. Those who are engaged in mapping the idolatry of the city know that this process is not simply a rational, co...

A Christianity that reflects its culture, whether that culture is Smith College or NASCAR, only lasts as long as it is useful to its host . That’s because it’s, at root, idolatry, and people turn from...

To reach people we must appreciate and adapt to their culture, but we must also challenge and confront it. This is based on the biblical teaching that all cultures have God's grace and natural rev...

In his excellent book, The Magnificent Story , James Bryan Smith shares this short little anecdote from the world of bumper stickers. While funny, it also brings up the commonplace idolatry that ...

Tertullian was an early church leader (a bishop in Carthage) in North Africa. His voluminous writing and ministry have led many to acknowledge him as the father of Latin Theology/Western Theology. Ter...

Every prayerless day is a statement by a helpless individual, ‘I do not need God today.’ Failing to pray reflects idolatry – a trust in substitutes for God. We rely on our money instead of God’s provi...

Sin isn’t only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than on God. Whatever...

Steve Jobs’s idol was food. This is perhaps the most surprising and wrenching revelation of Isaacson’s admiring book: from early in his life, Steve Jobs was obsessed with food in ways that increasingl...

An idol is anything or anyone that receives my primary focus of both my energy and my resources, which should first of all, belong to God.

At this very moment, and for as long as this world endures, everybody inhabiting it is bowing down and serving something or someone—an artifact, a person, an institution, an idea, a spirit, or God thr...