June Letter
June 16, 2007 by Vicky
Each summer, the Grosvenor House Hotel plays host to a prestigious international antiques fair. Up until her death, the Queen Mother was its patron. In 1996 she loaned for display two sixteenth century Ming vases. Like all the antiques on show, the vases were checked for authenticity. To everyone’s horror, the Queen Mother’s priceless vases turned out to be nineteenth century French copies. The organisers of the fait tried to cover their embarrassment: “This discovery makes the vases even more interesting.” One critic was more honest: “They are nothing but nasty little fakes.”
One of the great themes of the Bible is its universal condemnation of idols, which we might define as nasty little fakes of God. Jeremiah cannot understand how his contemporaries could exchange the glory of God for worthless idols, abandoning a spring of living water to dig their own wells, “broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:11-13).
Idols, at least in Western Europe, are rarely little man-made figures these days. But our celebrity culture easily breeds idols, with pop stars or sporting heroes attracting what can only be called worship. Or think of the idolatry of the body, the person working out in the gym or applying make-up in the bathroom, because their happiness depends of feeling good about their appearance.
Then there is the idolatry of possessions, the “I am what I am” mentality. A materialistic society will always breed discontentment, because we will always want better holidays or gadgets or kitchens than we have at the moment. Our western prosperity promotes the modern secularism that “this life is all there is, so be happy.”
To many people such idols appear as harmless examples of the way the world is. But just as those who value a real antique will disregard a fake, so a knowledge of the true God means that such idols need to be exposed as cheap imitations. That’s why Paul calls on the people at Lystra to “turn from these worthless things to the living God” (Acts 14:15). They take the adoration that is truly God’s.
When Paul writes to the Thessalonians, he describes how their response to the Gospel was to “turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven” (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10). To find Jesus meant rejecting those fake gods in please of the true God. In the light of Jesus, such modern idols are shown up as superficial and ultimately unsatisfying. Jesus makes clear where we will find ultimate satisfaction and reality: “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”