What It Looks Like When Idolatry Takes Root

“I will cut off your carved images and your pillars from among you.”Micah 5:13Notice the word “your” in verse 13. Idolatry had taken root among God’s own people. Micah is talking to the church crowd. Idolatry is worshipping and serving created things rather than the Creator. The apostle Paul speaks about this: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25). Idolatry is when a person says, “I can play the role of God.” It started with Satan, and he enticed the first man and woman with the same prospect: “You will be like God” (Gen. 3:5). This is what modernism and postmodernism are all about. Modernism (20th century): Darwin’s evolutionary theory caused people to think of man as his own “god,” emerging triumphant out of the swamp, and to believe that science and education would lead us to a perfect world. Well, it took two world wars (and the unparalleled bloodshed that followed) to shatter that illusion. Mankind could not take the place of God. Postmodernism (21st century): Instead of the supremacy of the human race, now we have the supremacy of the human individual: “What I feel, what I want. There is no truth above my truth, no values above my values, no purpose above my purpose.” The supreme questions are: What do you think? What do you want? How do you define success? The idolatry of modernism was: “We can play the role of God. We can create a perfect world.” The idolatry of Postmodernism is: “I can play the role of God. I can be my own God.” Either way, we are talking about worshipping created things rather than the Creator.Do you see any “modernism” or “postmodernism” around you or in yourself?