idolatry – Salvaged Faith

Text: Acts 17:16-32

When I lived in Nashville for seminary, my house just around the corner from Centennial Park.

In 1897, to celebrate one hundred years of statehood, Nashville hosted a World’s Fair – type exposition. Many incredible buildings were constructed on the park grounds… including a full scale replica of the Parthenon from Athens.

It was kind of surreal to live just a few blocks from one of the most iconic temples ever constructed… only this one was fully intact unlike the actual temple in Athens which has seen the wear of time.

When I would run at the park, with this looming structure as the centerpiece, I felt like I was transported to another time and place.

I wondered what it would have been like for the ancient Greeks who walked those streets of Athens and worshipped there…. or at the temple of Nike, or Zeus, or Hephaestos, or any of the other ancient Greek gods whose shrines were found throughout the city?

What would it have been like for Paul as he strolled those streets?

One of the first words we find in our scripture reading for today was that Paul was deeply distressed by this city flooded with idols.

Everywhere he turned there was a new place to worship a new god.

A shrine for silversmiths and for harvest, for healing and for the moon and the hunt…

And an idol was a representation of those gods used for worship.

Something carved in stone or molded out of metal.

A physical representation that people would hold or go to or in order to make a connection with whatever god it was they wanted to connect with.

And I got to thinking about our lives today.

As we walk the streets of our cities and towns and neighborhoods… what do our buildings and our signs and the way we live tell us about what we worship.

I’d actually like your help with this.

Think for just a few seconds… what are some of the things that you see other people worshipping today?

What do we obsess about, and give all of our time to?

What kinds of things do we build statues around?

What names and figures do we hold in reverence?

If you are joining us online, feel free to type your answers in the comments…

If you are right here in the room, shout them out and I’ll write them up here.

What are the idols that people worship today?

[space for writing]

Paul was a Roman citizen.

He had lived his whole life with this subtle background of the Greek gods in his life.

Even though he had always been a faithful Jew who worshipped one God, he would have known and interacted with many who were polytheistic… who worshipped many gods.

It would have been fairly normal and routine.

And yet, walking through these streets of Athens, he was greatly distressed.

He saw all of the ways people were spending their time and energy and wealth on that which was not God… his God… the one true God.

And it made him feel sick.

As you look at this list that we have created… how do you feel about it?

How do you feel about the idols that are worshipped in our midst?

Shout out in one word… or type in the comments online… just one word that describes how you feel…

[pause for answers]

I must admit… that much of this feels normal to me.

I feel like we are swimming, much like the people of Athens, in a culture of tribalism and difference and each person has their own truth… their own god… their own way to engage the world.

It is normal… and yet disorienting.

But I also have to admit that when I look at this list… and the things we haven’t yet put on there… that this is so normal… so much a part of who we are and how we live… that the truth is, we all have some kind of idol we worship in our lives.

We all have something that we get obsessed about… we all have things that we worship besides God.

I want to invite you each to take a minute to reflect in your own heart about what some of the idols are in your own life.

[pause for a minute]

Now, here is the thing about what Paul does when he encounters these idols.

When he encounters the stoics and the epicurians and those who are gathered at Mars Hill…

He doesn’t ask them to give up their idols.

He doesn’t tell them they are wrong.

In fact… he compliments how very religious they were!

Even though he is distressed by this worship, he doesn’t shame them or put them down.

No… he transforms the way they understand them.

He introduces his God… the one true God… and shows how our God doesn’t have just one specialty, or look out for only one type of person.

Paul describes our God as the one who truly accomplishes that which they are seeking in those idols of stone. Goodness… truth… life…

Our God is the one who gives life and breath.

Our God is the one who created every nation.

Our God doesn’t live in temples and isn’t served by humans.

In God we live, move, and have our being.

In essence, he is saying… what you are trying to seek through those idols of stone and clay and silver… turn to God and you will find it.

Maybe sports is your thing. It is the thrill of teamwork and watching individual gifts and talents shine.

But we can find that in God as well as the individual members of the body of Christ each play their part and the whole succeeds.

Maybe nature is what you place above all else. The rhythm and flow, the cycles of life and death.

All of those birds and flowers point to the One who made them.

Maybe you idolize work and wealth… But for what end? Is your aim to provide, to find stability, to yourself be highly valued and respected by others?

What greater value and respect can we gain than to be called beloved by God.

Paul, you see, challenges us not to lay aside our idols, but to transform them.

To look beyond them… deeper… and to ask what we are really seeking.

We can’t find answers in stone and clay and metal… but we can find our life and our hopes in the one true God.

So you don’t have to give up sports or working or whatever else it is that you idolize in order to follow Jesus.

But you might have to transform it.

You might have to hold it more loosely and recognize that in and of itself, it will not give you what you ultimately seek.

But there does come a day and a time when something that we worship simply will never lead us to God.

When we are fixated on something that will never satisfy… or bring life… or healing…

There are some idols present in our world that will only harm and destroy and that can never point to God.

It’s what we also name as sin.

That which separates us from God.

And if you have something like that in your life… it’s okay to let it go.

It’s okay to name it and to release it and to say no to the power it has over your life.

Friends, we might be swimming in a land of idols.

We might be surrounded by things that point to anything but God.

But that doesn’t mean that they have to rule our lives.

For there is only one God in which we live… and move… and have our being.

There is only on God that truly brings life.

I commented at the end of my last post about a survey which shows Christians are more likely to support torture than non-church goers. Here is what my friend Matt has to say:

The Truth As Best I Know It: The Danger of Supporting Torture: “We can give all the lip-service we want to the name of Jesus, but when we sanction the cruel treatment of God’s children in the defense of the security of the nation-state, we are giving our first loyalty to something that is much less than God. The Bible has a word for that: idolatry. And the two major complaints of the Hebrew prophets were idolatry and injustice. We’re clearly guilty on both counts.”

Usually when I hear people around me who are Christian wanting to support the idea that these tactics were acceptable in the instance of these three people, they are arguing not at all out of their Christian perspective, but rather flip into a consequentialist ethic in which the good which comes out of any particular action is determined not by the individual being harmed, but by how great the good is that can occur. The ends are justified by the means. Sure, torture one person if thousands of lives are saved. In my mind – that is the same ethic that led the Jewish leadership to hand over Jesus to Pilate.

I would be willing to hear of them and would love to find out who they might be, but I am not familiar with hardly any Christian consequentialist thinkers. As I was searching via google, the closest I cam was Neibuhr’s pragmatism – but in articles I explored, even in his pragmatism, the options are arrived at deontologically (or based on our duties and responsibilities – or in the Christian tradition, based upon God’s commands).

Besides the duty based ethics – in which we act ethically and morally when we follow God’s will (as in love your neighbor as yourself, pray for those who persecute you, do not murder), there are virtue ethics. In this ethical strain, it is the character of who we are that determines the ethical action, not the consequences of said action. We ask ourselves, what kind of person do I become if I commit such actions? What kind of nation do we become if we permit such actions? Are we more loving? More just? More faithful? I’m not sure that “safe” is a virtue – but most of the arguments I am hearing is that we are more “safe” because of what we have done. I would argue, we are probably less safe. Yes, particular terrorist actions may have been prevented – but have we bred hatred abroad that will only be fuel for cell recruitment? What was our response when we learned that our own were being tortured? Anger, hatred, resentment.

The last kind of argument I have been hearing is probably more of a deontological ethics than anything else. It claims that the state is given to us by God for a reason and that it is the state’s duty to protect its citizenry. Because that was the state’s duty – it performed these acts of tortuous interrogation in order to protect the people. The Christian response to this is that since the state is there by God, and it is simply performing its duty, we need to support it.

This is where we have to do some careful weighing of our ethical priorities. Because I believe here is where we have ethical principles that conflict. Yes, perhaps in some cases we would want to support the state as it makes its decisions. The bible gives us room to do so. BUT – when what the state is doing conflicts with other ethical principles, like love and justice, then it is our duty AS CHRISTIANS to stand up and speak out against such ethical violations.

Now, I’m not sure at all about prosecution and guilt in this matter. That in many ways is a state issue. But we have to clearly and inequivocally say that what happened was wrong and that it will not happen again. Period. End of story. And as Christians, we need to hold the state fast to those promises.

Posts Tagged with idolatry

A City of Idols

torture, ethics, and the state