When we think of worshiping idols and false gods, we often picture Asian people buying carved images of wood, stone, or gold or African tribes performing ritualistic dances around burning sacrifices. But we don’t consider the American man looking at pornographic pictures online or watching ungodly television shows and movies. We don’t think about the American woman incessantly shopping for more possessions or obsessively consumed with the way she looks. We don’t take in to account men and women in the Western world constantly enamored with money and blindly engulfed in materialism. We hardly even think about our busy efforts to climb the corporate ladder, our incessant worship of sports, our temper when things don’t go our way, our worries that things won’t go our way, our overeating, our excesses, and all sorts of other worldly indulgences.

Maybe the most dangerous of all, we overlook the spiritual self-achievement and religious-righteousness that prevents scores of us from ever recognizing our need for Christ. We can’t fathom a Christian on the other side of the world believing that a wooden god can save them, but we have no problem believing that religion, money, possessions, food, fame, sex, sports, status, and success can satisfy us. Do we actually think that we have fewer idols to let go of in our repentance?

 

 

 

 

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Excerpt from David Platt’s Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live.