An idol is anything that we trust, in place of trust in God. It's something that gets in the way of seeing Him and His purposes.
God puts this at the top of the laws of life: 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.'
'You shall not make for yourself an image... You shall not bow down to them or worship them' ... I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God,
It is not really the thing itself, an 'image', which may look harmless or even foolish to those not under its spell, it's because it is a 'god', a superstition, which enslaves you spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically.
Idols often have the appearance of virtue as a weed and a good plant can look the same as seedlings. It can take a while or some spiritual wisdom before the nature of the fruit is known.
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognise them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Mt 7:15-17
The civic and religious powers go along with the perverse beliefs as it suits their purposes of legitimacy and control. The more their credibility is invested in them the more often they morph into something more monstrous, as happened with the death of Capt James Cook, and continues writ large in western secularism: abortion, euthanasia, LGBTQ...
An idol is not doing its work unless you sacrifice something to it, and the more you sacrifice the more it likes it.
So this is serious, it's real, it has consequences - it requires spiritual warfare.
A simple experience
As a child I was in hospital for an indefinite period and was on a restricted diet. For breakfast I was allowed Cornflakes in its colourful box or some plain tasteless other cereal. I thought I'd get out sooner if I ate the plain cereal, I hated it, it was depressing, I forced myself to choose it, it did me no good.
But God was quietly seeking to show me something, I was just beginning to be aware of Him. He was saying - I'm not like this, this is not how I work, I bring life. Next morning I daringly chose Cornflakes, very soon afterwards I was released.
So what are some of the Idols we might encounter in the West? They are legion, but just to focus on some affecting Churches:
Climate - Net Zero
This seems to have a virtuous beginning. We were all aware of pollution as we could see smog and campaigns against it were widely supported. There were practical measure that could be applied and they worked.
We were also warned about the Hole in the Ozone layer which would cause skin cancers. This was something we could not see, and we weren't planning to go sunbathing in the Antarctic, but switching from CFCs to HFCs in fridges and something else in aerosols was relatively painless ($5billion in the US alone!). However HFCs have their own problems... but good news, apparently it's healing.
We then started to be told about climate, which we also could not see or measure. We went along with this too but its roots were always more ideological as described in Climate confusion motives. The UN IPCC has sought to present a case way beyond the scientific justification with the authoritarian tell-tale suppression of alternative views. Joe Biden described challenges to the official narrative as 'right wing science'. Any research group who wanted funding had better agree with the left-wing version. With the change in political leadership and the need for more energy for AI, the narrative has suddenly changed. Even the IPCC has dropped its headline gloomy projections.
But the UK continues to pursue the expensive and damaging Net Zero fantasy making electricity much more expensive than the US, and the related infrastructure changes are actually impossible. Everyone can see this is ideological not scientific. It's become an idol. We are supposed to be doing it to lead the world - well no one is interested. It's false-virtue signalling. And of course the sacrifice - this and other misdirections - makes the UK GDP per person lower than the poorest US state.
In the Church of England people are employed to persuade churches to move to net zero. If your church gas boiler breaks down you have to get a heat pump even if it costs you a fortune that you'd rather spend on pastoral ministry. Challenging these people will not result in a reasoned debate - you're a bad person if you don't believe. Why are we so blind to this non-sense?
We can construct lucid arguments against 'Net Zero', but above these we may sense that God has something to say: Am I not the creator. Are not all these things (coal, gas, oil, uranium) provided for your use. Use them well.
We can build wind or solar farms (which are not renewable!) but they have to make economic sense - no subsidies!
COVID
This seems to have been cast on the scrapheap of history already but the 'priests' have not been held to account. No proper national enquiry was completed. The global mishandling of a bad flu virus opened the eyes of many to the manipulation or incompetence of the ruling elites with draconian measures vastly out of proportion to the threat.
Apart from the emotional and economic sacrifices of lockdown there was the mass injection of an experimental chemical which did little good and severe harm to many, the full extent of which is still not known and may take years for symptoms to come to light.
Neighbours were ready to betray neighbours over lockdown infractions. Large number of people learnt how not to work - a foretaste of a Universal Basic Income 'you will have nothing and you will be happy' as the WEF says, the diminution of human flourishing.
Again there was the demonising of individuals who had very sound reasons for not agreeing with the official line and the studied disinterest in larger entities (Sweden, Florida) who showed a better way.
Many church denominational leaders seemed more than happy to bow to the 'thorn bush' regulations even going beyond them, not even allowing ministers to livestream in their own churches. But after the initial scare some saw the lockdown programme for what it was, that God was not in it, and gradually opened up. John MacArthur's church was flooded with people and fined by the LA authorities but eventually won damages from them.
Racism
It was probably no coincidence that BLM kicked off just after COVID. It followed the same pattern of massive overreaction. This big bad idol soon had worshippers literally bowing-down (well 'taking the knee'). Who were they honouring? Maybe some vague entity that pushed guilt, an Accuser to be subservient to? It did however bring in lots of money offerings!
There was something real to be sorry about and this was the brainwashing of Black Americans into underachievement that John McWorter and economist Thomas Sowell speak about. This demonstrates an aspect of Idols that as well as trying to hide God they also promote evil as truth. And this is the judgement: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
In the Church of England Project Spire (supposed reparations), and Racial Justice coordinators waste time, money and credibility. All expenditure by Charities has to have a definable benefit in line with their Charitable Objectives. Neither of these programmes would pass the test, and Spire is being legally challenged. Instead of winning people to a righteous cause they are alienating everyone.
Sexuality
From extreme feminism to Queer theory we are all forced to know way too much about this. But being the very focus of life-creation it will always be a massive attack vector. We've not talked much about the huge problems of idols in the Bible, but the sacrifice of babies linked to Moloch, Baal ('Lord'), Asherah stand out. The Israelites are told to be rid of them but like bindweed it seems almost impossible to remove. Trusting in Baal for fertility and rain is more costly that trusting in the Lord. Why did they do it? Elijah (
We have our own terrible sacrifice of life in abortion and denial of new life as marriage and families are deliberately weakened. The church is often too squeamish to call out abortion and to have a full-throated attack on the enemies of families. Should those leaders be worrying about having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power
Just issues
You might argue that these are all just issues - not Idols in a definable sense. But they all include human reactions to things that are not logical and are often malevolent to themselves and others. The responses are often 'suicidal empathy'. Then we ask why are they doing this and we're not sure even they know, it's a religious response, one reason why it's so hard to argue with these true-believers. They are of course highly detrimental to the well-being of those around them and catastrophic in politicians resulting in millions of deaths (as seen in Russia and China). It's the reason why nations with significant Christian influence do better than others, their leaders become wise for good. It's the basis for true scientific endeavour but instead we're plagued with academic abandonment of the truthful pursuit of knowledge. We have the Jason Arday tragedy and in Science the 'unreproducible experiments' crisis which contributed to the COVID disaster.
What to do?
Christianity is transformative - it tells the truth about God and ourselves that sets us free from illusions and offers us grace to begin a new life that breaks free from the delusions of our age. Alister McGrath - Oxford Theology Professor
So for each of these we do need to first recognise the deceptive idol-nature of these things and then work to cast them out. But as with unclean spirits Jesus says This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.
