Cultural Idolatry

Earlier this week, my theology professor said this phrase, cultural idolatry.  Immediately after he said it I scrambled to type it in my notes and write it by hand on my notebook.  Cultural idolatry.  Let it sink in.  Take a second and read it again: cultural idolatry.

Not only was the exact phrase I was looking for to describe the churched world I encounter.  It was also profoundly convicting.  Immediately I realized, if only the iceberg's tip, that I so easily fall prey to idolatry in this subtle though subversive form.  By the time I got home, I was reeling.  I couldn't sleep.  Until slumber took over, life began to unravel as the recognition of cultural idolatry showed itself all over.

Think of all the prejudices and preferences that have such weight in our lives, often rendering us impotent to the Gospel and to loving people as Christ has loved us.  I can think of the tension of tradition.  This is not to discredit the value of traditions.  But if those traditions prevent the church from worshiping in the Spirit or committing to the Word, then they are idolatrous and need to be removed.

As a worship leader, I often run into the tension between genre preferences in worship music, as if God actually cared whether we played the organ or guitar!?!  This is idolatry, plain and simple.  Anytime we let our preferences dictate or hinder our freedom to worship God in all Spirit and truth or limit our energy and excitement for worshiping God Almighty, we are committing idolatry. There is no other way to put it.

As Christians, we need to be vigilant to expunge even any semblance of idolatry.  God's first commandment is a direction against idolatry.  We should, thus, take it seriously and acknowledge how easily idolatry, even cultural idolatry, can infiltrate the church.  Let us then always be on guard against cultural idolatry in its many pervasive and dangerous forms.