idolatry on Exclusion

Each of us, Lord, has failed to fully observe your beauty. We fall in love with our own image and are left disappointed and alone. Please be faithful to us, Jesus, even when we turn from You. We...

A possession ought to belong to the possessor, not the possessor to the possession.

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

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

You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

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

God will put up with a great many things in the human heart, but there is one thing that He will not put up with in it--a second place. He who offers God a second place, offers Him no place.

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

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

Nothing enslaves more than that which we think we cannot live without.

He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.

If we must “feel” God’s presence before we believe he is with us, we again reduce God to our ability to grasp him, making him an idol instead of acknowledging him as God.”

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 ...

I know most Americans today do not worship Baal, but when I look at the church in America, I fear that we have our own Baals that demand our worship. I see so many people bowing down before prosperity...

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.

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.

An idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand.

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.

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...

Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just. Such a God is an idol of your own.

Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you. The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply The LORD is my chosen portion and my c...

Followers of Jesus should not be in bed with any of the political parties. Even if one affiliates with a particular party, may we maintain a posture to collaborate, listen, hold accountable, and engag...

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

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...

Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol.

Suppose my god is sex or my physical health or the Democratic Party. If I experience any of these under genuine threat, then I feel myself shaken to the depths. Guilt becomes neurotically intensified ...

A glutton is one who raids the icebox for a cure for spiritual malnutrition.

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

Failure is a gift. When we are forced to drink the dust of our idols, we can begin to turn our sights toward home.

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.