GIVE THE SUBTLE IDOL THE BOOT

Kelly Maeshero makes the insightful observation that idolatry is debilitating not only because it distorts God. Idol worship is dysfunctional because it distorts human beings, making them less than they are as sons/daughters made in the image of God. The making of God in the image of what He is not is an idol that degrades the life of Believers. It’s a sad state of affairs when a church is full to the brim and none of them are alive. Such degrees of death can be caused by the shroud of our perspective.

IDOLS IN PLAIN SIGHT
A devious idolatry is a christ that is not Christ, often associated with a gospel that is not His Gospel. A gospel of the law is not Christ’s Gospel and a gospel of supernaturalism divorced from the union with God wrought by the cross is not Christ’s Gospel either.

SEPARATED FROM US BY US
The crux of Maeshero’s paper is the thesis that the worship of anything not Jesus Christ alienates us from ourselves. Our point in this post is that the reason for living dead tree instead of live tree is a mental separation from God that is a continuation of the fall. A life-giving realisation is that since the cross we are not separated from God. We are one with God as Jesus urged us to REALISE with the words, ‘Realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20.

IT’S NOT
The Gospel of the Kingdom is not moralism and neither is it supernaturalism. But it is Christ our life and the incarnated Believer. There is nothing more supernatural, whole and holy than  our incarnation with Christ. Christ your life is the life of you and the life of the world.

If miracles are not the hub of the Kingdom of God, neither is sin-consciousness – a mistaken obsession that grows from legalism and religious idolatry. “Many .. believe in the idea of progressive sanctification—that is, continually repenting your sins, in the ongoing desire to be more Christlike.” (1) But genuine Christianity is not about you battling sin. It’s about Christ being your life. Christ come in your flesh is real when you believe it is.

THE WAY IS CHRIST
Godliness is not about sin-management as is commonly thought. Genuine Christlikeness comes to us by the Living Way which is Christ our life. We are talking incarnation and theosis which Jesus proclaimed with the words, “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you” John 14,20 NIV.

THE NARROW WAY
The Kingdom of God that Jesus began was never the perpetuation of religion. It is the expression of the trinity as us. Christianity that is a political program is not the Kingdom of God because it is the kingdom of the knowledge of good and evil. This is the culture of humanism and the culture of the most lifeless Christian administrators.

DISEASE AND DEATH
Leprosy entailed ugliness and separation. Jesus’ healing of lepers and cripples was illustrative of the truth, that idolatry, aka sin, resulting from the attachment to ‘gods’ that are no gods -  is a debilitating ‘spiritual disease.’ Diseases do not always result in death but they are a degree of death because they are degree of non-life. Unfortunately, many Christians live their entire life as a non-life because they are imprisoned in either religion or a religion of law. In our age law can take the form of ‘my Christianity’ or Moses’ laws.

THE GREATER HEALING
Healing eyes, ears and limbs is a sign that Jesus is among us to heal humanity. But we are not healed just because Jesus healed our blind eyes. We are healed because Jesus has undone our separation from God by His life and His cross.

In Jesus your separation from God is eliminated.
IDOLATRY = SIN
The disintegrating effect of idolatry is that it alienates us from God and from ourselves. The author notes in the paper that “Tertullian .. is convinced that no sharp or absolute distinction can even be drawn between idolatry in particular and sin in general; that in some respects, all sin is essentially a form of idolatry.”*  This draws our attention to the fact that an addiction to a distortion of the gospel which results in our separation from God in our mind, is not just pluralism but sin. Sin is always debilitating but the cause of sin is separation from God.

This warns us to beware of any subtlety of belief that continues this separation in the name of Godliness.

RELIGION AS IDOLATRY
For some communities of faith their distinctives are their idols. Tertullian’s observation about idols has relevance to the ‘worship’ of religion as religion and just as much to the sacralising of holy days, religious objects, icons and behaviours. This relates particularly to the contraction of morality by some to sexual behaviour and a wilful blindness to the evils of social inequality, poverty, worship of the material and the killing of the earth in the name of the Economy. Indeed, the thesis of Kelli Maeshero is that Capitalism and the Market in the West, is a major idol of our time. (1) This may come as jolt if we have made an idol of the status quo.

FOLLY AS RELIGION
How convenient that an obsession with sexual immorality can divert our attention from the evil economic system in which we live. We should be in no doubt that the kind of christianity and its self-serving morality that helped elect Mr Trump to the White House is both idolatrous and wicked. But we should not let this blind us to the fact that a stubborn adherence to any legalistic gospel is ‘no gospel at all’ and an idol.

IDOLS AND THE DEMONIC
Karl Barth wrote, “Once the eye, which can perceive this distinction [“between God and man”], has been blinded, there arises in the midst, between here and there, between us and the ‘Wholly Other,’ a mist or concoction of religion”[confusion] in which “there emerge precisely all those intermediary collateral, lawless divinities and powers and authorities and principalities that obscure and discolours the light of the true God.” Here is an illusion to the fact that some Believers have the discernment of a marrow and the reason for it.

IDOLS DEFINED
Simply put, IDOLATRY IS THE ASCRIPTION OF INFINITE LIFE TO SOMETHING THAT IS FINITE.
Even more simply put, it is the worship of anything not God as though it is God. For some Believers worship of their distinctive icons is their religion. It’s the bubble of illusion in which they hide to keep out the real Christ and the One Gospel of Jesus and the apostles. Such ‘worship’ is seldom explicit but is the deep attachment and hidden agenda of the community.

SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS
The religious spirit alluded to by Barth, explains why the Christian who has made a god out of her inherited ideas, her denominational perspectives and beliefs is so low on the scale of spiritual discernment. Not only is truth separated by a miasma of falsehood. It is actively obscured by demonic powers who are anti-Christ.

THE TOTEM
One may despise the totemic respect accorded animals yet accord a similar totemic obeisance to denominational icons and positions. The essence of idolatry is the attribution of Godness to entities that are not God – like one’s denomination. This is why the woman who exclaimed in staff meeting that anything that is not Jesus is a waste of time illustrated the Narrow Way as compared to the Wide Way of religiosity and ‘doing christianity.

THE FULLNESS OF GOD IS JESUS
God is not owned by the political right or left. Both the right and the left put Jesus on the cross. Here the idols are vested interests of different kinds, all of them based on limited grace and tinctures of the flesh. The New Creation is not dualistic.

Jesus is life in Himself. He is infinite and eternal life. In worshiping Him alone we abandon our ‘false christs,’ repent of the Messiah’s we have made out of our ‘distinctives’, depart the idol of our religious routine and enter what is already ours – our union with God. This is the ultimate rest for human restlessness and the genuine Sabbath of God.

(1) Hardy, Elle. Beyond Belief (p. 232). Hurst Publishers. Kindle Edition.
* For the same reason  no distinction can be made between some false gospels and a cult.
(1) Kelly Maeshero, ‘The Capitalist Religion and the Production of Idols’ (Theology and Critical Theory, 55 pp.)