Biblical Idolatry
Have you ever thought that we’ve got that whole idols problem licked? I mean, there’s no golden calves around to bow down to, or kings making giant statues that everyone has to worship when the band starts playing. But consider for a moment that an idol isn’t strictly a formed image, but anything we place above God. In that way every sin falls in some way into that first commandment. Martin Luther in “Treatise Concerning Good Works” wrote:
All those who do not at all times trust God and do not in all their works or sufferings, life and death, trust in His favor, grace and good-will, but seek His favor in other things or in themselves, do not keep this [First] Commandment, and practice real idolatry, even if they were to do the works of all the other Commandments
In other words, idolatry is a sneaky, sneaky thing because God has given us many good and excellent gifts which can be used as idols. One of those good and excellent gifts is the scriptures themselves. There’s a thin line we walk with the scriptures between respect and idolatry. Without respect for the scriptures we miss the whole point of why God blessed us with them (primarily, though not exclusively, to communicate the gospel with the world) and strip the scriptures of their authority and truth. However, if we go so far as to make the scriptures an idol we miss the gospel completely. We don’t enter the kingdom of God by what we believe about the Bible, we enter the kingdom of God by the work of Christ which is communicated by the Bible. I believe that once we reach the point where the Bible can’t be used as an inspiration for art we’ve reached the point where the Bible has become our golden calf.
As many of you have already suspected I am a huge nerd, and I like nerdy things. Things like comic books. Recently there was published a comic called “Testament“, that was based on the stories of the Torah. The basic concept was to use the Biblical stories as a framework, but to set them in the future. The writer, from what I could tell from an interview he gave to the Fanboy Radio Podcast (yes I am that nerdy) is Jewish, and I believe is only Jewish by genetics, as he seemed to have a secular worldview, even going so far as to say something along the lines of “it doesn’t matter that these stories didn’t actually happen”. So, needless to say this was not a work of worship to the living God, nor was it meant to evangelize, or do anything other than to create a compelling work of art. And that doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, I praise God that its happening.
When it comes to the scriptures, and how they’re viewed by the critical mass of the unchurched there’s only three options:
When works of art like Testament are drawn from the scriptures, even in the cases where its art for the sake of art and there is nothing evangelical, or worshipful about it the appreciators of that art are naturally moved from aversion or apathy towards the Bible to respectful appreciation, and so I praise God when secular artists draw their inspiration from the scriptures. And I especially praise God now because it has been quite some time since the scriptures were viewed this way by non-Christian artists.
But I would take even take it a step further. I would say that if you believe that when a non-Christian uses the Bible to produce art that it is somehow an affront to the scripture themselves you are dangerously close to turning the Bible into an idol. If you believe that non-Christians taint the scriptures just by the act of picturing Biblical events, or singing scriptures then it may be time to take a step back and put Christ back at the center of your faith instead of the scriptures.
July 18th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Excellent post. And another thing, I think people throw the term “idol” around too losely…it’s a sort of handy term that people use to condemn others while ignoring their own “idols”. Case in point, the Biblical toys thing on Slice: I think people were overreacting and then I get called immature because I said “Duh” (Godddd forbiiiiid). So here’s my retort, which I’m sure won’t get put on:
“If you want maturity, Ingrid, you got it: my point is that it’s meant to be a teaching tool, not meant to be bowed down to. Unless you know of some superhuman children who come out of the womb with the ability to read and comprehend the Bible, then that’s great, but for normal children, they can be used to teach them all the Bible stories we all grew up on. And how to keep the kids from playing with Jesus and Optimus Prime together? Here’s a novel idea: parenting. If you want to talk about people selling things to gullable Christians to make a buck, then that’s fine, but don’t forget to mention hymn CDs performed by non-Christian groups.”