Meaning of Idolatry

[John of Japan]

Hey, Craig, I'm happy about it, even if all them scholars ain't! 'Course, they probably don't even care.

 

[John of Japan]

Originally posted by Craigbythesea:
It absolutely amazes me that any conservative evangelical Christian would try to find a way to circumvent the fact that covetousness is idolatry just as much as bowing down and whole-heartedly worshiping a statue of Satan himself. The absolute wickedness of covetousness is as wicked as wicked can possibly be. Those who practice this extremely wicked sin shall spend eternity in the fires of hell just as surely as worshipers of Satan himself.

Craig, you need to tone down the rhetoric here. Someone might mistake you for a Fundamentalist, and I KNOW you don't want THAT!

Hey, nobody on this thread is saying that covetousness is not wicked. After all, it is listed in the Decalogue--separately from idolatry, which is the first one--no, two, of the commandments! Hmm, maybe God is trying to tell us that idolatry is more wicked than covetousness.

 

[John of Japan]

Originally posted by Craigbythesea:
The finest and most learned of the New Testament scholars and authorities of New Testament Greek as referenced and quoted above all agree that Paul wrote that covetousness is idolatry. Johnv disagrees with all of them, but agrees with John of Japan.

Are you sure you can't fit any more disdain for me into this post?

 

[James_Newman]

Sorry I'm late, guys! Covetousness is idolotry, because the bible says it is. How is it different from the actual act of worshipping an image? It is an internal, spiritual if you will, idolotry. Just as the Lord tells us we can commit fornication in our heart, we can commit idolatry in our heart when allow our lusts to supplant the rule of God in our lives. It is not necessarily the worship of money, although that may be the case. It is more the worship of our own desires over the will of God.

Philippians 3:19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)

just a thought.

 

[Craigbythesea]

John of Japan wrote,

Hmm, maybe God is trying to tell us that idolatry is more wicked than covetousness.

God is not a dysfunctional illiterate high school dropout! He is God! If He wanted to say that, he is more than capable of saying it. What He did say, through the Apostle Paul, is that covetousness in idolatry. His statements that this is so in Colossians and Ephesians are crystal clear and I am not aware of a single New Testament Scholar who has found any ambiguity in these statements.

 

[Craigbythesea]

John of Japan wrote,

Craig, you need to tone down the rhetoric here. Someone might mistake you for a Fundamentalist, and I KNOW you don't want THAT!

I am not a fundamentalist in the modern sense of the word; I am a conservative evangelical Christian who believes in the Christian Fundamentals of the faith.

 

[John of Japan]

Originally posted by Craigbythesea:
John of Japan wrote,

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Hmm, maybe God is trying to tell us that idolatry is more wicked than covetousness.

God is not a dysfunctional illiterate high school dropout! He is God! If He wanted to say that, he is more than capable of saying it. What He did say, through the Apostle Paul, is that covetousness in idolatry. His statements that this is so in Colossians and Ephesians are crystal clear and I am not aware of a single New Testament Scholar who has found any ambiguity in these statements.

</font>[/QUOTE]I was using something called "irony" here.

 

[Craigbythesea]

John of Japan wrote,

Are you sure you can't fit any more disdain for me into this post?

How could I possibly have any disdain for you in my heart when I know virtually nothing about you or what you believe? I do, however, have very much disdain in my heart for the "interpretation" that you have put forth in this thread regarding two of the clearest and least ambiguous statements found anywhere in the Hoy Scriptures. If you are imagining that you are finding disdain for you in my posts, perhaps you are also imagining that Paul didn’t write what he wrote, and that he wrote something else instead.

 

[Craigbythesea]

I was using something called "irony" here.

We are discussing a very important issue here, so it might be a good idea for us to try to write as clearly and unambiguously as did Paul in Col. 3:5 and Eph. 5:5 when he wrote that covetousness is idolatry and that a covetous man is an idolater.

 

[Bro. James]

Idolatry includes misdirected worship from Baal to Ego--the human kind suffers from the malady called sin which includes idolatry. There is only one remedy: Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Selah,

Bro. James

 

[John of Japan]

Originally posted by James_Newman:
Sorry I'm late, guys! Covetousness is idolotry, because the bible says it is. How is it different from the actual act of worshipping an image? It is an internal, spiritual if you will, idolotry. Just as the Lord tells us we can commit fornication in our heart, we can commit idolatry in our heart when allow our lusts to supplant the rule of God in our lives. It is not necessarily the worship of money, although that may be the case. It is more the worship of our own desires over the will of God.

Philippians 3:19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)

just a thought.

Good post, James. I pretty much agree with this. I can buy the position that covetousness is spiritual idolatry. Also, the Philippians passage is an excellent edition to the discussion. I'm going to study it carefully when I get time. Contra what Craigbythesea seems to think about me, I do not deny the clear statements of Scripture. My main concern has to do with the nature of covetousness idolatry.

The problem with the great scholars of American Christianity and with most of the posters on the BB is that they have never lived in an idolatrous country. Thus their interpretations and opinions are often based on a nebulous rather than concrete idea of actual physical idolatry.

 

[Craigbythesea]

Physical idolatry is an oxymoron!

 

[Bro. James]

The U.S. of A. is probably one of the most idolatrous regions on the globe. We are a rather large spectrum of Heddonistic Materialists. We worship our dwelling places, our cars, our boats, our bank accounts, our stock portfolios, our IRAs, Superbowl and Madonna, just to name a few.

This is probably not a new feature of the human kind. We have been depraved ever since Adam fell.

There is only one remedy for sin: the shed blood of Jesus, Christ.

Selah,

Bro. James

 

[John of Japan]

Originally posted by Craigbythesea:
Physical idolatry is an oxymoron!

This is exactly what I mean when I say that the typical American doesn't know what real idolatry is. Idolatry is BOTH a physical and a spiritual act. Greed/covetousness is not normally a physical act of bowing down, thus my agreement with James that it is spiritual idolatry.

Idolatry is physical when I see a child physically bow to a "jizo" (child Buddha). It is physical when I see a Japanese bow to a physical "kamidana" (god-shelf) and pray to his grandma. It is physical when a Japanese young person attaches a piece of paper to a Shinto shrine, claps his hands to get the attention of the spirit of the shrine, and prays to the spirit of the shrine for help on a test.

Idolatry is the worship of idols. A prominent meaning of worship in the Bible is to bow down, and that is a physical act.

 

[John of Japan]

Originally posted by Bro. James:
The U.S. of A. is probably one of the most idolatrous regions on the globe. We are a rather large spectrum of Heddonistic Materialists. We worship our dwelling places, our cars, our boats, our bank accounts, our stock portfolios, our IRAs, Superbowl and Madonna, just to name a few.

This is probably not a new feature of the human kind. We have been depraved ever since Adam fell.

There is only one remedy for sin: the shed blood of Jesus, Christ.

Selah,

Bro. James

You really need to get out more, Bro. James. Visit a mission field, especially an Asian one, to get a real perspective on idolatry.

You think Americans are the most materialistic people on the globe? Not even close! Case in point--an Internet mogul has just been arrested in Japan for cooking the books of his company. His publicly stated philosophy: money is the only thing worth getting, and companies who do not operate on this premise are run by fools.

 

[Craigbythesea]

John of Japan wrote,

Good post, James. I pretty much agree with this. I can buy the position that covetousness is spiritual idolatry. Also, the Philippians passage is an excellent edition to the discussion.

Yes it was a good post, and I pretty much agree with it also. And of course covetousness is spiritual idolatry—that’s the only kind of idolatry that there is. What you call “physical idolatry” is not idolatry at all—it is merely an outward expression of the idolatry in the heart of the individual. The physical act of bowing down to an idol is NOT in and of itself idolatry. Take away the intent of the heart, and the act is totally innocent. Consider for a moment a quadriplegic sitting in a wheel chair before an idol. If in his heart he is bowing down to it, he is committing idolatry just as much as the man beside him who is also physically bowing down to the idol. And the severely retarded man next to that man, bowing down before the idol but not having the cognitive ability to understand that the thing in front of him is an idol, and merely imitating the physical gesture of the man next to him who is worshipping the idol, is not himself worshiping the idol, nor is he committing the sin of idolatry.

Working long hours and carefully investing in the stock market is not idolatry. These, in and of themselves, are entirely innocent acts. But when these acts are an outward expression of covetousness, we see that the sin of idolatry is being committed—not by the physical acts, but by the intention of the heart. I am by no means a cultural anthropologist, but the study of the cultures of man has been a hobby of mine for many years. And over those years I have learned that we live in a world of many diverse cultures, many past, and many surviving or developing today. And in each of these cultures we find idolatry being physically expressed in different ways, but it is always in the heart of the people and we become aware of it when we see the outward expressions of what is in the evil hearts of men. Covetousness is a sinful condition of the heart and the more severe the covetousness is, the more severe will be the outward manifestations of it. They may be as mild as working a few hours of overtime or as severe as murder for financial gain. But if covetousness in the heart is the cause of these outward expressions, these outward expressions are expressions of idolatry.

 

[John of Japan]

Originally posted by Craigbythesea:
Yes it was a good post, and I pretty much agree with it also. And of course covetousness is spiritual idolatry—that’s the only kind of idolatry that there is. What you call “physical idolatry” is not idolatry at all—it is merely an outward expression of the idolatry in the heart of the individual. The physical act of bowing down to an idol is NOT in and of itself idolatry. Take away the intent of the heart, and the act is totally innocent. Consider for a moment a quadriplegic sitting in a wheel chair before an idol. If in his heart he is bowing down to it, he is committing idolatry just as much as the man beside him who is also physically bowing down to the idol. And the severely retarded man next to that man, bowing down before the idol but not having the cognitive ability to understand that the thing in front of him is an idol, and merely imitating the physical gesture of the man next to him who is worshipping the idol, is not himself worshiping the idol, nor is he committing the sin of idolatry.

Working long hours and carefully investing in the stock market is not idolatry. These, in and of themselves, are entirely innocent acts. But when these acts are an outward expression of covetousness, we see that the sin of idolatry is being committed—not by the physical acts, but by the intention of the heart. I am by no means a cultural anthropologist, but the study of the cultures of man has been a hobby of mine for many years. And over those years I have learned that we live in a world of many diverse cultures, many past, and many surviving or developing today. And in each of these cultures we find idolatry being physically expressed in different ways, but it is always in the heart of the people and we become aware of it when we see the outward expressions of what is in the evil hearts of men. Covetousness is a sinful condition of the heart and the more severe the covetousness is, the more severe will be the outward manifestations of it. They may be as mild as working a few hours of overtime or as severe as murder for financial gain. But if covetousness in the heart is the cause of these outward expressions, these outward expressions are expressions of idolatry.

Okay, this is a pretty good post, Craig, I'll grant you that.

I will also grant you that the sin of idolatry must begin in the heart, spiritually. And obviously someone accidentally or unknowingly bowing to an idol, like you describe, is not committing idolatry.

Other than that, we must agree to disagree. To make a comparison, Christ described an adultery of the heart based on lust. However, I am sure virtually anyone would agree that there is normally a physical element to adultery. And of course adultery is often compared to idolatry in the OT.

Again, serving idols is often mentioned in the OT, and that is often done by a physical act, just as serving God is. I have seen Shinto priests sprinkling holy water, blessing the spirit of a car or house, performing a wedding (the Buddhist priests do the funerals--an equitable divvying up of the moolah from the unsuspecting believers). These are all physical acts, and part and parcel of idolatry, as any Japanese believer will agree.

 

[Craigbythesea]

Originally posted by John of Japan:
Okay, this is a pretty good post, Craig, I'll grant you that.

I will also grant you that the sin of idolatry must begin in the heart, spiritually. And obviously someone accidentally or unknowingly bowing to an idol, like you describe, is not committing idolatry.

Other than that, we must agree to disagree. To make a comparison, Christ described an adultery of the heart based on lust. However, I am sure virtually anyone would agree that there is normally a physical element to adultery. And of course adultery is often compared to idolatry in the OT.

In the case of adultery, the physical act is NOT a sin any more than the physical act of bowing down to an idol is a sin. It is the willful desire and intent of the heart that is a sin, the physical act is nothing but an outward expression of the sin. A severely retarded young man who has not the ability to know any better and who looks at a woman and desires to know her (in the Biblical sense) is not sinning, and if that woman is a married woman who is compliant, and they perform the deed, the man has not sinned, but the woman has, unless she also had not the ability to know any better.

Originally posted by John of Japan:
Again, serving idols is often mentioned in the OT, and that is often done by a physical act, just as serving God is. I have seen Shinto priests sprinkling holy water, blessing the spirit of a car or house, performing a wedding (the Buddhist priests do the funerals--an equitable divvying up of the moolah from the unsuspecting believers). These are all physical acts, and part and parcel of idolatry, as any Japanese believer will agree.

The physical act, in and of itself, is NEVER sin. It is the willful desire and intent of the heart that is sin. When a young child accidentally spills a glass of milk, without any willful carelessness or disobedience, the child has not sinned. But if that child has been told to pick up the glass of milk using both hands, and the child willfully and intentionally disobeys and picks up the glass of milk with one hand and spills it, that child has sinned.

I have myself seen the most horrendous acts of barbarism in the name of idol worship, but it is only the desire and intent of the heart that is sin. When the desire and the intent of the heart is covetousness, that is idolatry, and we have clear and express statements to that effect in the New Testament. No, it is not the outward expression of idolatry that you have seen time and again in Japan, nor is it the outward expression of idolatry that I have seen in Singapore, but nonetheless Paul says that covetousness is idolatry and that those who are guilty covetousness are idolaters. Of this fact there is neither doubt nor question. Perhaps Paul was mistaken, but I don’t think so because, as I have posted, his opinion was common among ancient Jews, and I believe that Paul’s writings were inspired. And let’s not forget that Paul traveled, and everywhere he went he saw idol worship like you have seen in Japan and like I have seen in Singapore.

 

[HankD]

And the condemnation of sin is in our denial of sin, the rejection of the reproval of sin. Often times (maybe always) accompanied by deceitful fleshy works to try to cover the evidence.

John 3
19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

1 John 1
5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

We have a remedy:

Matthew 11
28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

 

[Bro. James]

Getting out more:
--having seen in person the various Far Eastern religion shrines in Thailand, Viet Nam, Japan, Philippines, Hawaii; and having seen the iconism in Cathedrals in Antokya(bible: Antioch), Turkey, New Orleans, etc. etc. I left out: Voodoo/Catholicism, ancestor worship/saint worship. All of this is pagan idolatry--lust of the eyes.

God is Spirit, they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. God does not dwell in temples made with hands.

It is the spiritual idolatry that gets us into trouble--Israel has the same problem.

These are examples of the great malady of man: totally depravity. By himself, man has not a clue as to what is good--everything he does is evil.

Jesus is the only remedy.

Selah,

Bro. James