“21^st-Century Idols are Hungry Too!”

Isaiah 44:12-17; Psalm 115:3-8; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13

January 29, 2006

David A. Kaden

‘Noncanonical’ has, sort of, become the word of the month. And the Jewish Rabbis of the second century tell a noncanonical story about Abraham as a teenager. Apparently, according to rabbinic tradition, Abraham’s father was an idol maker. He owned an idol shop where people could come and purchase whatever god they wanted for home, or temple, or whatever.

Well, one day, young Abraham was told by his father to watch the shop while his dad went out to get some lunch. Suddenly, the teenager had an overwhelming urge to prove the absurdity of idol worship. Taking a hammer, Abraham began smashing each idol to bits. Shattered fragments of wood, stone, and precious metals covered the floor. One by one he systematically destroyed each god, until only one was left—the biggest one. Its hands were outstretched and its eyes closed. And, into these outstretched hands Abraham placed the hammer.

When his father returned from lunch he was aghast. ‘What happened,’ he shouted at his son.

‘It was amazing dad,’ the teenager replied. ‘The idols all got into a fight and the biggest idol won!’

‘That’s impossible,’ his father said, ‘idols can’t do anything.’

‘Exactly,’ his son replied. And thus, according to rabbinic tradition, monotheism was born.

Well, in our text for this morning from 1 Corinthians 8, Paul, like Abraham in this noncanonical story, seems to have an urge to prove the absurdity of idol worship. To be sure, this was no easy undertaking on Paul’s part. Ancient Corinth was notorious for its temples and shrines, numbering over two dozen in the downtown district alone.

Corinthian Christians were bombarded with a daily barrage of paganism. In the center of town there were temples and shrines erected in honor of the entire pantheon: Apollo, Athena, Hera, Tyche, Poseidon, Asclepius, etc. etc. Each enjoyed a temple of their own. Even the Roman emperor was worshipped in Corinth; the temple built to venerate him was the city’s largest. While the temple of Aphrodite was said to have 1000 cult prostitutes—female and male (I might add)—whose sole purpose was to have sex with passers-by as an act of worship to the goddess they served. One historian referred to Corinth as the ‘sin-city’ of the first century world.

Indeed, to have some commitment to monotheism in this type of culture was not an easy thing for the Corinthian Christians. There were practically no social functions that didn’t include some kind of idol worship. One couldn’t even purchase meat in the marketplace that hadn’t first been sacrificed to an idol. This was quite an undertaking for Paul to try and prove the absurdity of idol worship—sort of like trying to swim upstream.

But the question is why? Why does Paul even try to swim against this tide of idolatry in Corinth? What’s so dangerous about idols?

Well, first of all, according to Paul, idolatry is dangerous because it threatens the central creed in Judeo-Christian faith—love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. When someone worships idols they are twisting created order. They are taking something that’s been created by human hands, and arrogating to it a status that it does not deserve. They are taking stone or wood, gold or silver, fashioning it into something, and then venerating it in a way reserved for God alone—honoring a created thing, instead of the Creator of all things.

In v. 4 of our text Paul writes, ‘we know that ‘no idol in the world really exists’…’ Idols have no objective existence—they do not exist on their own. Instead, they are accorded importance by the individual worshipper. One Christian writer said, ‘the gods become gods by being believed in.’

One day the teenaged Abraham was cleaning up his dad’s idol shop when he noticed that a large stone god had toppled over and was laying face down. Because it was too heavy to lift, Abraham asked his father for help. But while the two of them were lifting the large stone statue and maneuvering it into place, the head fell off and cracked when it hit the ground.

‘Quick’, said Abraham’s father, ‘grab a chisel and hammer.’

The boy obeyed, and watched as his father, working feverishly, created another head out of a stone block and together they attached it to the headless body.

Later on, having thought about the day’s events, Abraham approached his father and asked, ‘who is the god, you or the stone object? It couldn’t pick itself up once it had fallen, nor could it prevent its head from falling off. It was totally helpless. Father, you are the god of this god—it completely relies on you.’

Paul says, ‘we know that no idol in the world really exists’. To worship an idol is to give undue honor to a human-made object, which is otherwise totally helpless.

In ancient Judaism, the worship of idols was considered to be utterly foolish. In the Psalms, the psalmists declare that ‘idols are the creation of people, having mouths but not speaking, eyes but not seeing, ears but not hearing, noses but not smelling, feet and hands but not walking or feeling.’ In Second Isaiah, the prophet ridicules the idol worshipper who cuts down a tree to fashion an idol, and with the extra pieces of wood he cooks his dinner. But, perhaps the noncanonical book Wisdom of Solomon has the most stinging critique of idolatry by attributing the cause of all evil in the world to the worship of idols.

Indeed, idolatry, according to Paul, threatens the most central and basic creed of Judeo-Christian faith—loving the Lord our God with heart, soul, mind, and strength—because it gives misplaced honor to a created object. This is the reason why Paul quotes in v. 6 the basic Jewish prayer that every devout Jew prays daily—the Shema: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.’

Paul writes in v. 6, ‘For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.’ In this verse Paul has made an unprecedented theological leap and placed Jesus Christ alongside God the Father in the most well-known monotheistic creed ever written. According to Paul, for the Christian, there should be only one God and one Lord.

So, the first reason why Paul believes idolatry is dangerous is because it threatens the basic monotheistic confession, loving God.

But the second reason why Paul believes idolatry is dangerous is because it threatens the second basic Judeo-Christian confession, loving one’s neighbor.

In vv. 7-13 Paul launches into this rather bizarre discussion about ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ Christians. Apparently, in the Corinthian church some Christians felt it was okay to eat meat that had been sacrificed to the gods, while other Christians did not. This was a conscience issue. The stronger Christians did not have any guilty feelings about eating this meat, but the so-called weaker Christians did.

A division was developing in the church over this issue, and the principle of loving each other as neighbors was thrown out the window. For the one group, the worship of idols had become so alluring that they were willing to sacrifice church attendance because of it. While for the other group, not feeling guilty about this idol-meat had created feelings of pride and condescension toward their brothers and sisters in Christ.

In effect, each group was less and less resembling true human fellowship and community that are to characterize the church, and were more and more becoming self-focused.

This is not far from what Judaism had long anticipated would be the effect of idolatry on people. In the Psalms, those people who worship idols that have mouths, eyes, and ears, but do not speak, see, or hear, will become more and more like that which they worship. They will, in effect, become less of the true human being God wants them to be, with the related danger of becoming too inwardly focused.

This deleterious effect that idolatry can have is illustrated by C.S. Lewis in his book the Great Divorce. Lewis makes a distinction between human beings. Those who dwell in ‘Gray Town’—which, according to Lewis, is a kind of personal hell—are self-centered, and self-focused, and their existence is a shadowy one, which misses out on what it is to be truly human. Conversely, those who live in heaven—true reality—experience the pleasure of being truly human—of being able to think clearly about meeting the needs of others first.

According to Paul, idolatry is deleterious—it’s harmful to human beings—it causes us to miss the mark of truly loving God, and truly loving neighbor—the two most important laws upon which the entirety of Judeo-Christian ethics hang.

But, now, you may be thinking, what does this have to do with us? We aren’t living in ancient Corinth at present. And, we aren’t faced with images to worship. Yes, they offered meat to hungry idols in first century Corinth, but these hungry idols don’t exist in the 21^st century. And there certainly aren’t two dozen, or so, temples or shrines on the Commons downtown.

And, of course, I would agree.

While walking down the street we aren’t being enticed by hundreds of cult prostitutes, from the Temple of Aphrodite, trying to get us to join in some sultry form of worship. But, make no mistake, in our culture we still serve the goddess of love and lust. When human beings, in their personal relationships, replace love with the selfishness that is lust, Aphrodite is honored. Whenever sexuality ceases to be healthy and becomes abusive, or whenever human health and well-being are sacrificed for promiscuity, the praises to Aphrodite are sung aloud.

In our culture, we may not burn incense to Hermes the Greek god of trade and commerce, but in the corporate world his presence can still be felt. The profiteering of big oil, coal, and drug companies at the expense of people remind us that Hermes still receives our highest praise. Whenever the accumulation of wealth becomes an obsession for people, this not-so-ancient god draws near. (Hermes was also the god of gambling and gaming—these are two of our culture’s favorite pastimes.)

In the 21^st century, we may not offer meat to Ares the Greek god of war, but his voice is still heard in certain circles in Washington where the hawks reside. Surprisingly, it was President Eisenhower who predicted that our national defense apparatus would become a ‘military industrial complex’—where economics, politics, and war-making would be mutually beneficial.

In our modern times we may not be tempted to pray to the Roman Emperor, giving honor to the empire he represents, but 21^st century American Christians are facing a time when they are increasingly being asked to choose where their ultimate loyalty resides—with country, or with God? (How do we balance national pride with the worship of God?)

And even though we aren’t in the period in history when we’re being pressured to honor Augustus Caesar—in fact, Caesar is all of us as one Christian writer has said. Whenever pride clouds our decision-making, or the lust for power becomes one’s sole pursuit, prayers to Augustus are made.

In fact, the gods and goddesses of the ancient world are not so far from us. Indeed, in the 21^st century the gods are still hungry for whatever offering we may give to them.

In its most basic form, idolatry occurs whenever human beings take something that is good and created by God, and arrogate to it a status it does not deserve. Idolatry occurs when the acquisition of the paper and silver that is money becomes one’s sole pursuit. It occurs when the desire for victory and fame that athleticism brings becomes more important than honoring the God who provided the talent in the first place. It occurs when self-respect is warped into pride, or, when something mundane like poppy plants are used to create opium or heroin and then abused, destroying someone’s life.

Idolatry takes a multifarious number of forms. ‘Human beings,’ wrote the Reformation theologian John Calvin, are ‘idol-making factories.’

According to Paul, idolatrous behavior is dangerous to faith on two fronts: it threatens love of God and it threatens love of neighbor. It usurps God’s rightful place in our lives. And it places undue demands on us that can lead into what theologian Paul Tillich called: ‘a fragmented life with a multiplicity of conflicting directions rather than a single ultimate concern focused on God.’

Paul believed that idols were both vanity and power. He recognized, on the one hand, their ultimate nothingness. On the other hand, he knew of their allure, and the power they could exert to prevent human beings from reaching their full potential in God. A potential he believed could only be realized through loving God and loving neighbor.

It is no coincidence that when asked about which commandment from the Old Testament was the greatest, Jesus replied: “‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.’ And the second greatest commandment is this: ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There are no other commandments greater than these.” AMEN