What is an idol?

Based on the passages below under Logos2Go, we can conclude these things about what idols are:

1. An idol is made from commonplace material -- wood, for example.

2. A disproportionate importance is placed on this material. For instance, idol worshipers burn half their wood for fuel, but the other half they craft into idols.

3. The importance placed upon this material has to do with it being able to shape one's life history. That is why it is worshiped.

4. But as a matter of fact, an idol is by nature lifeless. It is mute and blind to the needs of anyone worshiping it. Ultimately it is blind to itself. It is just wood.

We are much too sophisticated to worship figurines crafted out of wood, clay or metal. That would be primitive. That would be idol worship. But let's try the following on for size.

How about a career?

A career is a commonplace thing: people live off of it for wages to buy fuel. But many also worship the other half, as it were. When we meet a person we often think of what his career is. And if he has a good career, that's the way he wants to be known. As if the career can tell one's life story: his past and his future.

But the career itself is actually lifeless; it is mute and blind. If you let up one day and not work from morning til night, the mute career won't lift a finger to help you. It has no fingers. It has nothing. It's just wood.

How about a nice car? How about a nice house? How about a nice vacation? How about some other thing, anything, that is common to this world?

Does that dream house you worship and work endlessly to support ... does that house even know who you are?

Logos2Go

Isaiah 44.19 Half of it I used for fuel; I even baked bread over its coals, I roasted meet and I ate. Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left?

Isaiah 41.22-24 Bring your idols to tell us what is going to happen. Tell us what the former things were ... Do something so that we will be dismayed and filled with fear. But you are less than nothing ... he who chooses you is detestable.

Isaiah 41.7b ... He says of the welding, 'It is good.' He nails down the idol so it will not topple.