Tom writes:

In the last chapter Paul wrote that selfless love for others is foundational to following Jesus. Having made that point Paul circles back round to the question of idols. He doesn’t want immature believers to misunderstand the freedom he asserted in chapter 8. The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. And so any created thing is something we can enjoy with thankfulness. We believers should enjoy stuff. Eating chocolate can be a great form of worship. Hallelujah and Amen. But the abuse of created stuff for our pleasure, or devotion of ourselves to a god other than God, can really arouse the Lord’s jealousy. It got many Israelites killed. A neat way to understand this distinction is to say idols are harmless but idolatry brings death. Idols have no negative influence on us. You can admire an artist’s design of a Buddah statue or eat halal chicken and it won’t do you any spiritual harm at all. But idolatry is toxic for everyone every time. Idolatry opens us up to the demonic and opens the church up to being destroyed.

The toxicity of idolatry is that it sows disorder into your life. All of creation was made for God. He sits at the centre of it like the central hub of a spoked wheel. If you start to shift the central hub off to one side you are headed for a bumpy ride and then a horrible crash... probably into someone else in the church. When that starts to happen the one Lord of the one church is aroused with one goal - to reassert himself as the one source and one end of all creation. Only when that is the case can harmony and peace be ensured. And so, while we can admire an artist’s sculpture of Buddah and even value some of the Buddah’s philosophical claims, if we start to think Buddah is the centre of our wheel then we are headed toward trouble. And of course idolatry isn’t just about engagement with the practices of other religions. The most alluring form of idolatry seems to be the primary pursuit of profit, or incessant imitation of influencers, or barrowing down banquets of bounty. But these are just warnings about errors; the thrust of what Paul emphasises is the robust confidence we can have in God. God loves us, he has our back, he made all things for our pleasure and, if we just keep God as the central hub of our existence then nothing- not even demons- can take us out of his care.

Question for reflection

The pursuit of which idol do you think is most likely to be damaging Jesus’ church today?

1 Corinthians 10 - Wednesday 29th May