Are You An Idolater?

DEBORAH PRATT | Life Assurance Ministries’ Online Moderator |

If we are born again, regardless of our respective doctrinal backgrounds, we hopefully come to understand that God will not share His sovereignty over us with anyone or anything else. 

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19-20 NASB). 

The context is a passage dealing heavily with strong warnings against sexual immorality because it is sin against the body, which belongs to the Lord through the seal of the Holy Spirit, who lives in us and does not leave. It is a pervasive theme throughout the entire Bible, both New and Old Testaments.

For a while now, I’ve been studying sections of the Old Testament, mostly the historical narratives and the prophets, with several different small groups, and of course through cross-references as they occur. We’ve been studying Genesis, 1 and 2 Samuel, Isaiah, Joshua, Judges, some in Kings and Chronicles, and soon Kings and Prophets as a set. Studying these books is sometimes difficult and uncomfortable because of the sin about which God confronts the people, and the disastrous consequences of sin all the way through, only offset by the mercy of God and His promises for ultimate salvation we recognize as Christ, the Messiah. 

The theme is relentless. Sometimes they obeyed and enjoyed seasons of blessings; then they disobeyed, bringing snares into their midst, and they became harlots, whoremongers, practicing every kind of lewd behavior, all in the name of worshiping dead idols made of wood, metal, and stone. God had made a covenant with the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai; they as one voice agreed to do as God told them, and the covenant was ratified by Moses sprinkling sacrificial blood on them. This covenant held them to standards of behavior with the consequences of blessing for obedience and punishment for disobedience. 

The book of Ezekiel the prophet, for example, is startling and graphic in some portions regarding the details of Israel’s harlotry and the promises of God’s discipline. Their leaders in general didn’t help matters; as the years went by, judges were appointed to settle conflict and defend the nation; however, they went from good to bad. At the end of the book of Judges, it is said, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). When the people demanded kings, there were many more wicked kings than good kings, and Israel, still under the agreement God made with them at Sinai, suffered captivities and estrangement from the holy sovereign God to whom they belonged. 

Idolatry as Self-Interest

As part of my study in the Old Testament, one small group of former Adventists (and one “never-been”) has been going through the book of Hosea. Hosea was God’s final prophet sent to the northern kingdom of Israel before its fall to the nation of Assyria, and it offers climactic punctuation on Israel’s long history of idolatrous patterns. Yet again, God laments over the rebellion of His people, conveying His intentions for them through Hosea’s marriage to the prostitute, Gomer, and Hosea’s faithful love for her despite her unfaithfulness; God even told Hosea to buy Gomer back when she had been sold as a slave. God continued to speak about His patient, enduring love for His corrupt nation if they would only return to Him. The final verse in Hosea reminds us that there were, even in those times, some who remained faithful to the One True God.

As I have been reflecting on the state of Israel in her ongoing slide into apostasy characterized by idolatry and all its subheadings—sexual deviance, murder, coarse language, theft, pride, rebellion, spiritism, child sacrifice, public displays of sexual deviance (not an exhaustive list!)—I wondered how former Adventists understood idolatry as Adventists. After all, all the above-mentioned sins have self-worship as their source, even if it was attributed to some other neighboring god—“everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (emphasis mine). It was clear that Israel’s debauchery was driven by self-interest in many forms.

God’s first words to His people in the commands given at Mt. Sinai were, 

“You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments…”—Exodus 20:3-6

I contend that, if the first words God gave Israel were what it meant to have other gods, then all other sins, including the many sins that fall into doing whatever is right in our own eyes—are worship of self. We either exist in a kingdom of darkness and death where we worship self, or we live in the kingdom of His beloved Son and worship Him (Colossians 1:13). These are mutually exclusive sets. 

From my childhood, I learned the ten commandments, the basic creeds, and their explanations according to Martin Luther. So, I had a rudimentary understanding of what was considered right and wrong, but I’m sure I did not understand being bought with a price or having a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone, at least until I was older. I could see how the biblical understanding of idolatry could develop over time, with experience, and with the indwelling Holy Spirit. But what if one did not have the indwelling Holy Spirit to enlighten one if or when a person read the Bible? 

So, I asked a few of my former Adventist friends what they understood about idolatry as Adventists—before they left Adventism. Here is a summary of responses:  

• Idolatry was taught to be anything that took the focus off God.
• God was equivalent to the Sabbath, so keeping the Sabbath was never thought of as worshiping the day, but worshiping God; therefore, no Sabbath meant there was no God.
• Idolatry was something remote missionaries encountered in their work—physical idols, images made by indigenous peoples.
• Israel’s idolatry was primitive and related physically to pagan idols and the activities practiced related to those idols. These practices seemed remote and in another reality. 
• Since jewelry was against God, it was considered an idol.
• Idols were thought of as little images that were worshiped.
• The “one true church” was equivalent to God, so to leave the church was to leave God.
• Coveting would have been considered a form of idolatry – greed for something God had not chosen to give someone. 
• Idolatry was considered anything one’s flesh wanted, or anything that took attention away from the Lord’s work.
• Living for money or success was thought to be an idol; that idea was sometimes projected onto others who had money or success—if they had it, it was an idol to them.
• Idolatry was a strictly physical thing, evidenced by whether a person was doing the proper work for God, so behavioral self-denial was the key to avoiding idolatry.
• Some felt that needing to be understood was an idol. 

While this is not in any way a wide survey of former Adventists, a common theme is that idolatry happens when one doesn’t squelch distracting desires that might lead one away from fulfilling the work God has for them, and who God is, as defined by Ellen White. So as with most doctrinal concepts, the Adventist worldview colored, defined, and twisted the concept of idolatry. The Sabbath was treated as an idol, but God was made equivalent to the Sabbath, so it couldn’t possibly be idolatry. And idolatry was a feature of the mind, not a condition of a spiritual nature. 

Former Adventists (and others) who are born again learn a different truth about idolatry. God’s sovereignty and the Messiah become the central theme, and hearts of stone become hearts of flesh, softened toward Christ in us, the hope of glory. Idolatry becomes the thing we ask the Holy Spirit to search our hearts for to cast it out, whatever form it takes, to keep our hearts soft. Learning that we are spiritual creatures with temporary tents we call bodies, but that the Lord is sovereign over even our bodies, gives us pause to consider what it means to glorify God in our bodies. Certainly, it means something different than the anxiety-ridden and blasphemous health message. 

I remember years ago when I first saw issues of Self, the personal improvement magazine. Even then, I was struck by the title. It made me think of a gospel tract I used in college that had a drawing of a heart with a throne, and the question was whether you were on the throne of your heart, or God was. It was one or the other. Still, discerning idolatry in our born-again lives is a challenge—like David, who prayed in Psalm 139:23-24, 

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.” 

We desperately need the Holy Spirit to show us the condition of our hearts toward Him so that we can spiritually differentiate between people, places, activities, or things that we elevate in priority above Him, and the treasury of freedom we have in Christ. The Holy Spirit helps us see rightly, without negligence or unhealthy scrupulousness, and keeps us grounded in truth and reality as we lay our hearts before Him. †