Idolatry Quotes

I long for a church that understands the dangers of entertainment and sees it for what is is: a lion crouching at the evangelical door, ready to devour us. We need a culture of evangelism that never sacrifices to the idolatry of entertainment, but serves up the rich fare found the gospel of Christ. ~ J. Mack Stiles

There are many idols but I would categorize them into three: heroes who are strong enough to lay themselves bare to the people and cowards who hide behind symbols and crafted figures. Then there is one who rules over them. They all love the same thing; praise and adoration. The question is, to whom does the glory belong to, really? ~ DON SANTO

Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life. ~ George Eliot

It's unfashionable these days to talk about sin, and it's even less fashionable to talk about idolatry. The world likes to tell us that we're beyond that now. When we honestly discuss the sinful attitudes behind our actions, we are often shushed: "You're not that bad! Everyone does those things! You need to have better self esteem!" But the human heart is the same now as it was in biblical times. We don't have to bow down to a golden statue to worship idols. When we trust in anything other than God for peace and happiness we are essentially practicing idolatry. Only when we see the idols yet in our hearts can we truly "put off the old self" and "put on the new self" (Colossians 3:5-10). ~ Staci Eastin

Sometimes God seems to be killing us when He is actually saving us. ~ Jen Pollock Michel

The opposite of Christianity is not atheism, but idolatry. ~ Peter Kreeft

Not much has been written about the Nereids of modern Greece. Wherever there is a warm, healing stream they believe that it flows from the breasts of the Nereids. ~ James Theodore Bent

God seems to be about turning our loves around and using them toward the great love that is their true object. ~ Richard Rohr

While it lasts, the religion of worshiping oneself is the best. ~ C.S. Lewis

I have ever thought so superstitiously of wit, that I fear I have committed idolatry against wisdom. ~ John Lyly

She (his future wife) was so deep into the Lord's presence that I felt like an outsider. ~ Jeremy Camp

The gospel of Jesus Christ solves the innate problem we have of "glory greed." We are, every one of us from birth, incompetent thieves of the glory that belongs only to God. We know in our insidest insides that we fall short of his glory, and so we are constantly clawing and scratching to make up that difference in some way. This is how all sin is fundamentally idolatry and how all accumulations of worldly treasures - be they material goods or religious merit - are fundamentally acts of self-worship. Then in the gospel of Christ, God forgives our petty theft, sets us free from the bondage of our idols, and unites us Spiritually, irrevocably, and satisfyingly to himself. Now the glory we tried to steal is shared with us freely, and it is real glory this time, not these pathetic knockoffs we think will do the trick. ~ Jared C. Wilson

I said to all the things that throng about the gateways of the senses: "Tell me of my God, since you are not He. Tell me something of Him." And they cried out in a great voice: "He made us." CS Lewis ~ Philip Zaleski

Jim Crow repeated the old strategies of the reptilian powers of the air: to convince human beings simultaneously and paradoxically that they are gods and animals. In the Garden, after all, the snake approached God's image-bearer, directing her as though he had dominion over her (when it was, in fact, the other way around). He treated her as an animal, and she didn't even see it. At the same time, the old dragon appealed to her to transcend the limits of her dignity. If she would reach for the forbidden, she would be "like God, knowing good and evil." He suggested that she was more than a human; she was a goddess. ~ Russell D. Moore

The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting. ~ Jonathan Swift

One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is not the mother of harlots. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Idolatry is really not good for anyone. Not even the idols. ~ John Bach

No man engaged in a work he does not like can preserve many saving illusions
about himself. The distaste, the absence of glamour, extend from the occupation to the personality. It is only when our
appointed activities seem by a lucky accident to obey the particular earnestness of our temperament that we can taste the comfort of complete self-deception. ~ Joseph Conrad

Humor, together with irony,forms a safeguard against idolatry. ~ Krister Stendahl

The spider fattens himself on flies, and the Pharisee has his reward. Foolish persons are easily entrapped. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Our greater beastliness lies not in a penchant for brute force,but in our greater corruption, nihilism, and decadence; in our servitude to the
overwhelming systems we create; in the sociopathic rationalism we adopt to master natural forces and to compete with the machines we build;and in the scientistic idolatry that co-opts the religious impulse. Of course the ancients resorted more to brute force: they lacked the infrastructure to punish their enemies and victims in a safer, more
sophisticated fashion, with advanced legal regimes and mass-produced, maximum security prisons; with engineered propaganda for social conditioning; and with economic, cyber, and drone warfare. We channel our aggression with more sophisticated instruments, but the use of those instruments doesn't ennoble us. ~ Benjamin Cain

He would henceforth worship and defend the very reason for Joy, the Almighty Maker of Joy. ~ Philip Zaleski

And that day the cultural god of science had shone a bit less brightly, had died a little in the people's minds. ~ Clifford D. Simak

If our identity is in our work, rather than Christ, success will go to our heads, and failure will go to our hearts. ~ Timothy Keller

To worship ourselves rather than Christ is idolatry; but to dismiss anything of ourselves, including our bodies, as of trivial importance is a form of blasphemy. ~ Francis George

Either you allow Holy Scriptures to change you, or you will normally try to use it to change
and clobber
other people. It is the height of idolatry to use the supposed Word of God so that my small self can be in control and be right. But I am afraid this has been more the norm than the exception in the use of the Bible. ~ Richard Rohr

If you love anything better than God you are idolaters: if there is anything you would not give up for God it is your idol: if there is anything that you seek with greater fervor than you seek the glory of God, that is your idol, and conversion means a turning from every idol. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Since Genesis 3 we have been addicted to setting our sights on something, someone, smaller than Jesus. ~ Tullian Tchividjian

The truth is, we do not have addiction problems. We have misdirected worship. I'm convinced every human being is in recovery and being weaned from some form of addiction because of idolatry. Your addiction or mine may not have us eating out of trash cans, but our sin habit is hurting and diminishing God's glory in our lives. ~ Derwin L. Gray

Idolatry is when you worship what you should use, and use what you should worship. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Modern American war is as easy to script as a B movie. ~ David Hackworth

We stand at a crossroads. Idolatry looms. Traditional values in jeopardy. Truth under siege and virtue abandoned. ~ Gregory Maguire

Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes - are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

In America we have an idolatry called the "adulation of youth." Apparently distressed by their inability to communicate with the younger generation, many adults simply imitate it. ~ Billy Graham

To the extent that we are trapped by the overvaluing, idealizing tendency, we are not free fully to celebrate the limited but real goods of creation. Idolatry by definition is not an accurate assessment of creaturely goods, but an overvaluing of them so as to miss the richness of their actual, limited values. If I worship my tennis trophies, my Mondrian, my family tree, my Kawasaki, or my bank account, then I do not really receive those goods for what they actually are - limited, historical, and finite - goods which are vulnerable to being taken away by time and death. When I pretend that a value is something more than it is, ironically I value it less appropriately than it deserves. Biblical psychology invites us to relate ourselves absolutely to the absolute and relatively to the relative. ~ Thomas C. Oden

Ordinary love is mere animal attraction. Otherwise why is the distinction between the sexes? If one kneels before an image, it is dreadful idolatry; but if one kneels before husband or wife, it is quite permissible! ~ Swami Vivekananda

God is not crushing the dreams of parenthood when he deals the card of infertility. God is asking you to crush the idolatry of pregnancy, to be sure. And, he is saying: Dream My dreams, not yours! ~ Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

I inquired what wickedness is, and I didn't find a substance, but a perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance – You oh God – towards inferior things, rejecting its own inner life and swelling with external matter. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

He was vain and tended to surround himself with intellectual and moral pygmies. ~ Stephen L. Carter

At nineteen, one lives in the utter idolatry, therefore the extreme superstition, of sex. Monstrously exaggerated tales about sexual feats, which we listen to greedily, determine our expectations. The disappointments are correspondingly great. ~ Gregor Von Rezzori

When something becomes so important to you that it drives your behavior and commands your emotions, you are worshipping it. ~ J.D. Greear

Contrary to secularist myth, science in practice is innately and irrepressibly religious: it serves either God or idolatry. But one of the features of idolatry is deceit. In this case, idolatry conceals from itself that it is idolatry. ~ Vern Sheridan Poythress

When people say, "I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself," they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's. ~ Timothy Keller

Idolatry, like all sin, is devastating to the soul. It cuts us off from the comforts of grace, the peace of conscience, and the joy that is to be our strength. ~ Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

Mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the purpose then. But now, when all purpose was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire. ~ George Eliot

Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?' asked Lord Henry.
'Because without intending it, I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing Harry - too much of myself! ~ Oscar Wilde

Every uncompromising ideology reduces faith to an idolatry, ~ Walter Brueggemann

If your deepest feelings are reserved for something other than Almighty God, then that something other is an emotional idol... if you get more excited about material things than the simple yet profound fact that your sin was nailed to the cross by the sinless Son of God, then you're bowing down to Tammuz. ~ Mark Batterson

Admirations are never paid in any way, try to make yourself of what you admire, and it will pay you with originality. ~ Auliq Ice

Has what you do for God become more important to you than the Lord Himself? ~ Colin S. Smith

Practically speaking, when I mix up my roles at any given stage of life with my ultimate identity, I end up in idolatry. ~ Wendy Alsup

You can either be god of certain areas of your life, or let Me be God of your whole life. ~ The Skit Guys

The limner's art may trace the absent feature,
And give the eye of distant weeping faith
To view the form of its idolatry;
But oh! the scenes 'mid which they met and parted;
The thoughts
the recollections sweet and bitter,
Th' Elysian dreams of lovers, when they loved,
Who shall restore them? ~ Charles Robert Maturin

In fact, the death of a dream is often a subtle form of idolatry. We lose faith in the God who gave us the big dream and settle for a small dream that we can accomplish without His help. We go after dreams that don't require divine intervention. We go after dreams that don't require prayer. And the God who is able to do immeasurably more than all our right brain can imagine is supplanted by a god - lowercase g - who fits within the logical constraints of our left brain. ~ Mark Batterson

Despite the many iniquities that have found entrance into the practices of image-worship as it is in vogue now, I do not condemn it. Ay, where would I have been if I had not been blessed with the dust of the holy feet of that orthodox, image-worshipping Brahmin! ~ Swami Vivekananda

Oh, only those whose souls have felt this one idolatry can tell how precious is the slightest thing affection gives and hallows. ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon

For what is idolatry if not this: to worship the gifts in place of the Giver himself? ~ John Calvin

If you pretend, that God rewarded Ahab or the Ninevites for worshipping their idols, you must prove that God is so far from being highly displeased with idolatry, as himself often declares, Deut. xxxii. 16, 17, 21, - 26. Judges ii. 14. 2 Kings xvii. 10, - 18. Psalm cvi. 19, - 40 Jer. xviii. 7, 35, l. 38, &c. - that he is ready to accept and reward the worship of idols, devils, bulls, dogs, cats, saints, leeks, onions, consecrated wafers, &c. if men be sincere in it. Rare doctrine this, for a Presbyterian clergyman, of this enlightened age! ~ John Brown Of Haddington

To cleave wood is a common every-day business, and yet it has its dangers; so then, reader, there are dangers connected with your calling and daily life which it will be well for you to be aware of. Your occupation may be as humble as log splitting, and yet the devil can tempt you in it. Nowhere is he safe who thinks himself so. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

When one becomes accustomed to "companionship" without demands, life with people may seem overwhelming. Dependence on a person is risky but it also opens us to deeply knowing another. ~ Sherry Turkle

Being "ordinary" means that we reject the idolatry of pursuing excellence for selfish reasons. We aren't digging wells in Africa to prove our worth or value. We aren't serving in the soup kitchen or engaging in spiritual disciplines because we long to be unique, radical, and different. When we do these things for selfish reasons, God becomes a tool for winning our lifetime achievement award. Our neighbors become instruments in the crafting of our sense of meaning, impact, and identity. What we do for God is really for ourselves. ~ Michael S. Horton

The attempt to redefine the family as a purely voluntary arrangement grows out of the modern delusion that people can keep all their options open all the time. ~ Christopher Lasch

Ultimately all idolatry is worship of the self projected and objectified: all idolization is self-idolization. ~ Will Herberg

Keep yourselves from idols." The warning isn't given to them because it wasn't a real danger or because there was an off chance someone might fall into idolatry. It was given because this is our root problem on any given day. It is what we, especially as followers of Jesus, must fight against. ~ Joe Thorn

Let not my love be called idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,
Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone,
Which three till now, never kept seat in one. ~ William Shakespeare

I am blind to the very things that make for our own peace. ~ Oswald Chambers

If gratitude is not rooted in the beauty of God before the gift, it is probably disguised idolatry. May God grant us a heart to delight in him for who he is so that all our gratitude for his gifts will be the echo of our joy in the excellency of the Giver! ~ John Piper

the simplest definition of the Abrahamic faith. It is not our task to conquer or convert the world or enforce uniformity of belief. It is our task to be a blessing to the world. The use of religion for political ends is not righteousness but idolatry. ~ Jonathan Sacks

The way we contemplate technology on the horizon says much about who we are and who we are willing to become. ~ Sherry Turkle

Conservatives have no understanding of modern capitalism. They have a distorted understanding of the traditional values they claim to defend. ~ Christopher Lasch

A worship of truth can be idolatry if the truth is small enough. ~ Austin O'Malley

She demanded, "Give up your life of idolatry and become a doctor."
I declined. "I have my geraniums to look after. ~ Nick Bantock

If you do not worship God, you worship something, and nine times out of ten it will be yourself. You have a duty to worship God, not because He will be imperfect and unhappy if you do not, but because you will be imperfect and unhappy. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Idolatry, then, is always polytheism, an aimless passing from one lord to another. Idolatry does not offer a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth. ~ Pope Francis

This is a simple study. Yet, you can use this book to see deeper into the personality of God. I find it heartwarming that God was like a concerned parent who continuously moved the dialogue forward. Notice that Jonah was like a rebellious and headstrong son committing an idolatry of law over justice. (page v) ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

Early on I saw the repression and idolatry of Stalinism, and when it cracked, I was open to religion again. ~ Lionel Blue

The better (i.e., the more accurately) we know God through his Word, the more genuine our worship will be. In fact, the moment we veer from what is true about God, we're engaging in idolatry. Regardless of what we think or feel, there is no authentic worship of God without a right knowledge of God. ~ Bob Kauflin

As is the case with many adolescents, Lewis's increased command over over the things of the world brought with it a corresponding atrophy of the moral sense. ~ Philip Zaleski

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry. ~ George Bernard Shaw

He cross-examined his very wine when he had nothing else at hand. ~ Charles Dickens

If we was master, then we could help ourselves. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

True religion is not about possessing the truth. No religion does that. It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers. ~ John Shelby Spong

I began to understand why so many people chose to be "born-again" and follow strict rules that would tell them what to do, once and for all. It was tempting to rely on a formula - "accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior," for example - that became itself a form of idolatry and kept you from experiencing God in your flesh, in the complicated flesh of others. It was tempting to proclaim yourself "saved" and go back to sleep. ~ Sara Miles

...[G]old is their god, and for riches will they pawn their lives as well as their lands. ~ Walter Scott

When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an 'idol,' something you are actually worshiping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger is actually the way the idol keeps you in its service, in its chains. Therefore if you find that, despite all the efforts to forgive, your anger and bitterness cannot subside, you may need to look deeper and ask, 'What am I defending? What is so important that I cannot live without?' It may be that, until some inordinate desire is identified and confronted, you will not be able to master your anger. ~ Timothy J. Keller

We will always prefer lesser satisfactions to the satisfaction of Christ, because the lesser ones appeal to the god of self - a ravenous, insatiable, fickle idol indeed - while satisfaction in Christ requires that we assassinate that god. We won't know what it really means for the joy of the Lord to be our strength until we've had intravenous idolatry yanked out and all other crutches kicked away. For many of us, Jesus won't be our absolute treasure until we are out of options. ~ Jared C. Wilson

Even while an atheist, he held some things sacred. ~ Philip Zaleski

When we give up on what draws us near to God, we become like beasts. ~ L. Michael Morales

the ultimate irrational prejudice of the human mind: the belief that the symbols of reality are more real than the reality they symbolize. That's us all over. We believe that money is more valuable than the work it represents, that sex is more essential than the love it expresses, that an actor is more admirable than the hero he portrays, that flesh is more alive than spirit. That's the whole nature of our deluded lives, the cause of so much of our misery. One by one, we let idolatry ruin each good thing. Without faith, we can't help ourselves. Without faith, we can no more see through our materialist prejudice than we can see through the big blue bowl of the sky and into the eternity beyond. The choice between idolatry and faith - which is ultimately the choice between slavery in the flesh and freedom in the spirit - is the only real choice we have to make. I ~ Andrew Klavan

Could it be that desire for a good thing has become a bad thing because that desire has become a ruling thing? ~ Paul David Tripp

We are molding Jesus into our image. He's beginning to look a lot like us because, after all, that is who we are most comfortable with. The danger now is when we gather in our church buildings to sing, and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshiping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead, we may be worshiping ourselves. ~ David Platt

From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hinduism religion. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Modernity has abandoned the household gods, not because we have rejected the idolatry as all Christians must, but because we have rejected the very idea of the household. We no longer worship Vesta, but have only turned away from her because our homes no longer have any hearths. Now we worship Motor Oil. If our rejection of the old idols were Christian repentance, God would bless it, but what is actually happening is that we are sinking below the level of the ancient pagans. But when we turn to Christ in truth, we find that He has ordained every day of marriage as a proclamation of his covenant with the church. A man who embraces what is expected of him will find a good wife and a welcoming hearth. He who loves his wife loves himself. ~ Douglas Wilson

Idolatry, especially that of the body, is for Athanasius a kind of barometer, measuring the perversity into which humans have fallen, the degree to which their knowledge of God has been lost, and the extent to which the image of God in them obscured, the consequence of which is corruption and death. ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

Idolatry happens when we take good things and make them ultimate things ~ Timothy Keller

Our culture says 'live your dream,' but God calls you to place your dream on His altar and to keep it there at all times. It is good to have hopes and dreams for the future, but we have no rights. There are no certainties. Any dream can become an idol and, if it does, God will bring it down. ~ Colin S. Smith

There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine. ~ Karen Armstrong

Far from being aloof or detached from power, the church is all about power - the end of power, meaning the purpose of power, the taming of power, and the unleashing of power for true flourishing. The church proclaims the true story of power. By telling the whole story from Genesis to Revelation, with its astonishing bookends of good, very good and glorious news, the church recognizes and affirms our human ambitions and aspirations, placing them in the context where they truly make sense and can find their rightful place. By telling the full truth about idolatry and injustice, not least by recalling the stories of how our own heroes fell into compromise and foolishness, the church makes clear just how damaging our pride is to ourselves, our neighbors and the whole groaning creation. And by recounting over and over the immense cost of redemption, the church leads us to abashed and grateful humility before the one who gave up everything for us. ~ Andy Crouch

To do Mohammed justice, his main attack was against the idolatries of Asia. Only he thought, just as the Arians did and just as the Unitarians do, that he could attack them better with a greater approximation to plain theism. What distinguishes his heresy from anything like an Arian or Albigensian heresy is that, as it sprang up on the borders of Christendom, it could spread outwards to a barbaric world. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

God intends to free us from more than our idolatry; He intends to free us from ourselves. He even wants to liberate us from our need to find a silver lining in suffering. ~ Tullian Tchividjian