Martha: gods at war

There is a story of idolatry, it runs from the day of creation until I write this, and as I write, and possibly on until eternity. It’s one of the ‘thou shalt nots’ in the ten commandments, and it’s something we write off as an old pagan practice that should no longer concern us or what we do. But whether it’s a statue of some god that time has forgotten or the mountain we once called god, even nature, can be an idol. The point is that the real idols are beautiful, attractive, why would you want to worship something that doesn’t possess qualities that you like. That’s one of the reasons the Greeks and Romans weren’t all that religious until Christianity came along, they saw nothing they wanted to emulate or be a piece of in their gods and goddesses. When we talk about idolatry everyone talks about the lures of money, what it does to a person, the problems with it, and the evil that can happen when it comes to loving money over everything else. They usually forget about the other more dangerous ones, even if they mention sex, romance, family, work. They forget about image, not some lofty place you hold yourself in, just what you strive to be, particularly if that image is what you see as a perfect form. There are so many people who hold themselves to an ugly standard just to appear pretty. Image is one of the most lethal idols because it’s one of the least convincing. No one wants to pretend they don’t need some kind of image, but if it gets held too high, it just turns into another kind of idol that no one should worship. This was a book written by Kyle Idleman, called gods at war, and it was a scary story that we seem to hate admitting even exists.