While Moses went to the mount to get the commandments already revealed to him by God, God’s people grew tired of waiting for God and turned to idolatry. Often we point fingers of scorn at Israel and her golden calf even while we fashion idols of our own. American idols do not look very much like the idols of yesteryear, but in essence they continue the tradition of replacing God with the tangible that does and will reward us according to man’s metrics. Perhaps in our arrogant hubris we think ourselves immune to idolatry, and yet at many junctures Americans jump at the chance to discard Nature’s God in favor of other opportunities to worship. We trust in man and make flesh our arm, appeal to the favour of men who are fallen and trust their promises. Many people clothe their naked villainy with odd old ends stolen forth from holy writ and seem saints when most they play the devil. Some Americans even do the right things for the wrong reasons: to be seen of men. It’s not a new thing, and it’s not gone. It’s just more subtle now, where what we do and accept constitutes a bastardization or perversion of the good things for which God opened the possibilities. The Great Deceiver wants humans to take the pleasures which God has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Thus, our idolatry leads us further away from God and into the dark abyss.
From its earliest hours, even this great nation fell victim to the historical subtlety of idolatry. While some invoked their Maker, others made the Revolution a matter of personal prestige, preference, and prosperity. Most of them trusted in stone and steel for defense and productivity rather than in the God intoned by many, and although references exist to their Maker and Nature, these were bastardized to appeal to the irreligious and the conveniently religious so as not to offend those whose assistance mattered more than the Divine. Although a great patriot, Patrick Henry called, not for more piety, humility, and more submissiveness, but for more mortal mettle. Never in his speech, impassioned though it may be, does he appeal to the people to repent and draw nearer to God. He implores us to “make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power”. Never does Henry invoke God anywhere else in writ, making it look like an appeal to the religious sensibilities of the people, invoking the name of God but denying the power thereof. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln opined that, “blinded by unbroken success” America had become “too proud to pray” and to implore let alone deserve the assistance of the Almighty. Closer to the modern day, we build armies and navies, start propaganda mills, and fill a murderer’s chest with medals while he’s across the foam in order to create heroes for the folks at home. Men are elected to Congress because they “served in Vietnam” (even if they were forced to serve), none of whom were ethical as soldiers. War is, after all, one of Satan’s tools, for it makes all men affected by it miserable in some way. Today, we trust in Government, electing people to office who ensconce government programs to do the things that God commands. Government does this so that government can control it and take credit for it, and so those driven by power and praise aspire to those offices so that we will bow at their offices, fawn at their doors and give unto them of our offerings as bribes for their favour. They set themselves up as gods unto the people, who no longer pray to God because even though it’s not yet illegal it’s discouraged, dismissed and derided as the hokey imaginations of the feeble-minded.
Modern America doesn’t even try to hide idolatry, going so far as to name shows like American Idol as tantamount admission that we no longer worship our Maker. Americans engage in every effort imaginable to give praise to the man instead of to God. We find sports icons, actors, comedians, and the like and make them our heroes. Some even fawn over fictional characters and “superheroes” in their fantasy which draws along an asymptotic line to faith in God. Others trust in politicians, in entrepreneurs, or in “slighted” scientists and become offenders for a word if you find any chink in their god. All of these are fallen, like we are, and we acknowledge omnipotence only in the Marvel Cinematic Universe while denying that possibility in our own. People no longer aspire to be virtuous. They aspire to be famous. The Tide Pod challenge and a slew of internet crazes exist so that people can have their 15 minutes of fame, however fleeing, however vapid, and however ill advised those attempts and contributions may be. Men are rewarded, not because they enlarge society or innovate something crucial but because they can sell minecraft skins, emojis, or advertising because people watch their youtube channels where they live stream video games. Adding insult to injury, many women choose these men as mates for the only skill that seems to matter- the skill of providing money with which to keep their wives perpetually entertained, pretty, and famous. Now these are sweeping generalizations, but they grow in number weekly as we promote people for bread and circuses. In order to get more bread and enjoy more circuses, people make ever increasing sacrifices to the man. Many pillars of industry/commerce spend so much time working to impress their bosses, build their portfolios so that they can advance and retire to do what THEY like. It’s not a sin to enjoy life. There are things to please the eye and gladden the heart, but there is a time, season and purpose to pleasure. Even women forsake their honour and duty to help God create life in favor of careers, of “equality”, and in the pursuit of wealth. We seek happiness in iniquity, in the accolades and approbation of other fallible mortals. When you make excuses to not serve, to not lift, to not admonish, to not testify of Christ, you serve mammon. In that quest to serve and appeal to mammon, we see an immutable trend to rack and stack people based on man’s metrics. In every circle of modern society, the hosts and guests divide people according to ranks based on their fine-twined linens, depending on their access to education, with regard for their cars or homes or titles or paychecks. Even in churches, men are elevated for their wealth, their credentials, their popularity, and their public personae. We no longer hold up men who are virtuous, honourable, of good report and praiseworthy, especially if those people do not validate what we already happen to believe. God’s way is to remember that we are eternally dependent on God for all that we have and are, that the teacher is no better than the learner, that the greatest among us will be our servants. God asks us to submit to His will, His timing, and His methods, to wait upon Him, to confess Him, and to give all that we have and are to Him, even if He asks us to sacrifice our firstborn sons as He commanded Abraham. Meanwhile, we permit fallen mortals them to act as if they were our masters and heap on their heads crowns of glory.
Idolatry eventually serves to bastardize God’s teachings and gifts to gratify man’s vain ambitions, conceal man’s sin, and elevate the base against the honourable. Everything with which we are born and that we are taught in Sunday School exists so that we can prepare to, learn the means of and then actually work to build God’s kingdom on earth. Our health and our wealth, our talents and our time, our families and our friendships all exist so that we can waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light the hidden things of darkness. Those teachings are to make us aware and capable of being profitable servants and multiplying our talents, not to our own advancement but to the advancement of society. This advancement is not to the utopia of man where we sing kumbaya and all share in a communal arrangement but to make men ready to return to God’s presence and partake of His glory. Rather than serve God’s purpose, we bend every opportunity, scientific endeavor, legal argument, and religious tenant to slake our lusts. Procreation becomes a form of recreation. Men spend mountains of money finding new contraceptive techniques and then funding abortions so that they can enjoy the pleasure without the concomitant responsibilities inherent in the powers granted by God. Most of the pageantry of men and women to find partners exists in so much puppet theater, not to form families, to show love, or to sacrifice for one another but to slake our lusts, gratify our pride, and solace our vain ambitions. We seek partners, not based on principles or character but so that we can show off trophies to our friends, brag about our exploits, and luxuriate in a common financial strategy that serves us rather than our offspring. Does any other species engage in those activities regularly out of the same self-serving arrogance with which humans take to fornication and adultery? Our good health, our good genes, our fortunate circumstances to be born in a free culture serve only ourselves rather than move us to multiply God’s creations and train up children to love and serve Him when we die. Eventually, recreation becomes the aim of every human endeavor. We look for ways to earn as much money as quickly as possible, not so that we can use it to build the Kingdom, but so that we can waste our time either in riotous living or in things which are of no worth and cannot satisfy. Murder is no better than cards if cards will do the trick. In retirement, some couples go out and waste their children’s inheritance. They do not waste and wear out their lives preaching the gospel, redeeming the dead, perfecting the saints or serving the downtrodden. They serve themselves. We make every excuse we can to do things we want and every excuse we can to explain away why we don’t have time for what God asks of us. Since we only care about recreation, our relationships remain superfluous. Out of fear, of rejection, of consequence, of being alone, we avoid difficult topics with our friends and avoid discussion of politics and religion, when those are essentially the two topics that matter most. Instead, we talk about anything else- the Vegas Knights, Vegas Nights, Vegas “values”, vegans, etc., just so we don’t have to talk about things that really matter with people we claim matter to us. We invite people over for barbecues but not baptisms. We invite them to hear Tupperware salesmen but not to meet the missionaries. We invite them to church fundraisers but not to church worship service. We invite them to book club but not to discuss the Bible. Sometimes we give support and praise, but what man among us bends his knees and prays? We don’t know our neighbors. We don’t know our congregants. We know the Kardashians however, and we know who was voted off the island this season. For each season of our lives we do not talk of Christ, we do not rejoice in Christ, we do not preach of Christ, we do not prophesy of Christ, and we fear to write according to our prophecies, and so our children have no idea to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.
Like its sisters in ancient times, American idolatry also separates us from both our God and our own good. When Stephen Hawking died, he was lionized as one of the greatest minds ever born, but he doesn’t have all the answers, and many of his answers may one day prove to be false. Ironically too, although he believed in a universe of infinite possibilities, he denied the possibility that there might actually be a God. You see, idolatry’s success requires the divine to actually be a myth, and yet idolatry doesn’t try to debunk divinity; it just focuses it onto some inanimate object above the bed, on the wall, atop a table, or hung about one’s neck. The power of an idol remains in the hands of the mortals who preach about it. The power of an idol is MEN, who are fallen. It is exceptionally arrogant of men, who are flawed, to claim any poor power to make of themselves something better than the sum of their parts. The ax never boasts itself against him who heweth therewith unless the ax convinces the trees that the ax is God and now the hewer. Idolatry in our time is a combination of both subtleties and blatant overtures, all designed to teach men to gratify his own pride, to live it up, to do what feels good, to protract HIS virtues on others, to set himself up as a god to other men and to worship what has no real power to protect and elevate men. You are not a better man because you own an ax or even because you can make one. Men are better off because they use that ax to husband only those resources they can receive and wisely use. Idolatry turns people away from God, and it has become a tool of government. Governments are always comprised of men who know that unless they direct our worship they have no power over us. American idols enslave men as their close cousins have throughout time to superstition and sophistry which dooms every society embroiled therein. American idols make Americans idle.
