In the Bible, we see how the children of Israel alternated between cycles of faith in God and cycles of rebellion and idolatry.
Instances where the Israelites lived in obedience coincided with peace on all sides, and abundance.
However, as soon as the Israelites got too comfortable and took their relationship with God for granted, famines, droughts, sieges, and outright wars became the order of the day.
Whenever I read these stories, I often wonder what was so special about these idols that provoked worship from the ancient Israelites.
But the more I think about this, the more I realize that perhaps there’s no big difference between me in 2020 and the Israelites back then.
If time travel was a practical possibility, I’d bet that the Israelites who lived thousands of years ago will also be flummoxed by the idols we have in this present age.
On one hand, they will probably be shocked by how we literally worship our phones by paying homage to it first thing in the mornings before we get out of bed, and worshipping it before we shut our eyes for the night.
But even more, they will be blown away by the altars we’ve erected to our ideas.
You see, in the wake of the scientific revolutions which began approximately 500 years ago, man’s capacity for abstraction has grown in leaps and bounds.
This means that man could think about physical objects in the form of ideas. For instance, a physical rock was now seen as something possessing “mass” and could produce “force” when made to move at a certain “acceleration”. With this power, man was able to start understanding the workings of the physical universe.
Ever the maverick, man sought to use this newly-found powers of abstraction to solve societal or economical problems exclusive of God.Sometimes, it had the potential to work. But more often than not, it gave us brutal dictatorships, depressions, and wars.
When you fall into the trap of using abstraction capabilities exclusive of God, what you’re saying in effect is, “As far as this economic/social problem is concerned, I know everything there is to know”
In other words, you’re imitating the devil by elevating your idea to the place of God - falling in love with it and worshipping it unabashedly.
I’d end with the following profound words from Makar Ivanovich Dolgoruky, one of the main characters in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 19th-Century novel, The Raw Youth:
“A man cannot live without worshipping something; without worshipping, he cannot bear the burden of himself. And that goes for every man. So that if a man rejects God, he will have to worship an idol that may be made of wood, gold or ideas.So those who think they don’t need God are really just idol worshippers, and that’s what we should call them.”