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What Is Idolatry?
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I declared them to you from of old, before they came to pass I announced them to you, lest you should say, “My idol did them, my carved image and my metal image commanded them.”
Isaiah 48:5
A large part of the world’s religion is precisely this: speculation about the nature of God. Men (and women) have thought, talked, meditated, and written about what they think God is like.
Twenty-first century secularists have picked up on this, and they point out that a large part of religion is only a projection of people’s own ideas and prejudices, not universal truth. Therefore, we are not bound by it.
And the spiritual mindset today is: “What really matters is not what the great religious writers and teachers said, what really matters is what it means to you.” What comes to your mind when you think about God? What is your experience of God? How do you feel about faith?”
An idol is simply “my idea of what God is like.” So, you might think of an idol as something that was made out of wood, stone, or metal. But many idols are not metal, but mental. They are constructed not in a workshop, but in a classroom: “I like to think of God like this,” we say.
Any approach to knowing God that begins with our speculation will lead to idolatry. A god who is a projection of your own thoughts and feelings is simply an extension of yourself. If that is your god, then you are ultimately on your own. You cannot come to know the living God by speculation; you come to know the living God by revelation.
Why is speculation about God attractive to people? What is the problem with it?
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