idolatry on Worship as Performance

Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the ...

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...

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...

O God, you are indeed worthy of our praise and worship. Yet we turn away and worship other gods. We find ourselves at the altar of our careers, our financial security, our self-image, our status. We t...

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?

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.

The crux and crisis is that man found it natural to worship; even natural to worship unnatural things. . . . If man cannot pray, he is gagged; if he cannot kneel, he is in irons.

Lord Almighty, you alone are worthy of our praise. Yet we worship idols. We place our desires, passions, and ambitions in a more prominent position than we place you. We fail to serve you alone. We fa...

All idols begin by offering great things for a very small price. All idols then fail, more and more consistently, to deliver on their original promises, while ratcheting up their demands, which initia...

Leader: Sing to the Lord a new song! Sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord! Bless his name! Proclaim his salvation from day to day! Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works...

Idols are dangerous when a worshiper, having lost patience in God, transfers his hope and joy into a deity represented by a handmade thing and cries to it: “Awake and arise!” In this move, human antic...

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...

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...

What people revere, they resemble, either for ruin or restoration.

Dear Lord, we worship You as our God and King, as the One true God, as the faithful Guardian of our souls. We come to You in this time of worship to stop, to breathe, and to listen. We want to open ou...

Almighty God, You created us in your image, each of us in your likeness. Help us to worship You alone, Lord, and never bow to any created thing. We see your handiwork in every one of your works, b...

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.

In a world where sex, wealth, power, and beauty are the dominant idols, these idols will flood our dominant media.

Pastor: “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!” All: Yet because of the sin in our hearts, we have strayed far from yo...

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...

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...

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

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 ...

We are masters at creating an image, but we are novices at recognizing and repenting of the image we have created.

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 ...

Dear Lord, we come to You this morning first to give You our worship and praise. You are the King, You are the Lord, You are the one who did indeed create us and give us life. You never leave us. You ...

Your grace, O God, has appeared for the salvation of all, calling us to renounce false gods and irresponsible love. In the midst of our sin, Christ has appeared as a sign of our hope, redeeming us and...

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 ...