Theology Blog

As I prepare for Lent, I find myself oddly enough thinking about idol worship. We don’t talk a lot about idol worship, even though it’s a constant theme in Scripture (and not just the Old Testament). It seems to be one of those things that we have tossed aside as a dated idea or concept. Perhaps the Indiana Jones series put our view of idol worship out of whack. Somehow we do not see idol worship as a relevant issue (and we even have a TV show called American Idol). Simply put, idol worship is putting anything before God as an idol, it means that we see something as more significant and important than God. Surely if we are asked we who follow Christ would say that there is nothing more important than God. If we took a deeper look at our lives however we might notice that there is a lot in our life that we prioritize over God. Some of these things may be bad, some may be neutral and others may be good. If I look at my own life there are many things I enjoy; perhaps even too much. I might just as well play a game on my phone instead of praying (not that you cannot play a game on your phone) when I have not taken time at all that day to pray. There are things, ideas, and people that we enjoy so much that they may in fact be idols. It could be a celebrity, a friend, another relationship, an athlete, the idea of success, a product, food, a company or more. It is worth our careful consideration to examine what it is that we place as more important that God.