Tag Archives: Rodney Stark

Bible Interpretation, Theology

Why Is God So Concerned with Idol Worship?

Leave a comment

The Second Commandment, as given in Exodus 20:4-6, forbids the worship of idols. The northern kingdom of Israel, starting with the reign of Jeroboam, ignores this commandment and after 200 years of existence is finally judged by God in the form of a devastating Assyrian invasion.

The author of 1 and 2 Kings writes that God’s judgment upon Israel is due to the rampant idol worship of the kings and his subjects. So why is this so important to God? We know that worshiping the creature instead of the Creator is a foolish error and disrespectful to the Creator. The Creator is a jealous God who covets the love of his creation. But I think many people miss the further implications of idol worship.

God placed the need to worship deep into the hearts of all mankind. It is not possible, as human beings, to not worship something, even if it is ourselves. When we worship something or someone besides the true Creator God, it leads inexorably to horrible consequences.

These consequences are sometimes spelled out in the Old Testament (OT) and sometimes not. The writers of the OT assumed that their readers did not always need to be reminded of the consequences of idol worship, so they would often use idol worship as shorthand for a whole host of sins. The prophetic writings clarify the list of sins that accompany idolatry.

Paul R. House, in The New American Commentary Volume 8 – 1 & 2 Kings, writes:

As a result of their idolatry, which amounts, of course, to covenant breaking of the worst sort (cf. Exod 20:3–6), the people no longer hold high ethical standards for how to treat one another. Oppression, greed, and brutality become common. Hosea notes that lies, wickedness, intrigue, and immorality are regular occurrences among both the people and their leaders (Hos 7:3–7). Amos claims Israel’s women “crush the needy,” “oppress the poor,” and exhort their husbands to hurt the poor for material gain (Amos 4:1). The men, on the other hand, love luxury, are lazy, and care nothing about their country’s moral decline (Amos 6:1–7). People are sold to pay petty debts (Amos 2:6–8). Similarly, Isaiah declares that justice is denied to the poor, the widow, and the orphan (Isa 1:17; 10:1–4). The false prophets do not restrain the people at all (Isa 28:7–13). None of these abuses are mentioned in 1, 2 Kings, so an awareness of their existence in this era helps readers understand that things were even worse than the author indicates. The people are as corrupt as their leaders.

In the Torah, Moses warns the people of Israel that if they adopt the worship of the Canaanite gods, they will inevitably commit the sins of incest, child sacrifice, bestiality, temple prostitution, and a host of other deviant practices. The author of 2 Kings 17 explicitly mentions that some Israelites were practicing child sacrifice before the Assyrian invasion.

So you see, worship of false gods leads to a society that is rotten to its core, a society that preys on the weak, a society where might makes right, where every man is a law unto himself. This is exactly what happened to the nation of Israel. Idol worship is where it all begins.

Sociologist Rodney Stark has studied the impact of different concepts of god on the behaviors of diverse human societies. Stark concludes from his studies (For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery) the following :

The contrasts already drawn between supernatural beings and unconscious, impersonal, vaguely supernatural essences reveal that different conceptions of the supernatural have dramatically different effects on the human experience. Even within Godly religions, compare the social implications of belief in a pantheon of undependable and often immoral Gods with those of belief in a supreme being who imposes moral obligations on humans. As will be seen, the consequences of these and other such differences in how the supernatural is conceived are decisive.

In other words, it really matters what kind of god you worship. The famed Christian theologian, A. W. Tozer, penned the following words decades ago in The Knowledge of the Holy, and they are a fitting summary of this discussion.

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.

For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God.

Religion, Science and God

Is Science Going to End Religion?

2 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

A common refrain among secularists is that as science advances, the need for religion continues to diminish, and eventually the need will disappear altogether. After all, the argument goes, the only reason religion exists is to answer questions for which science has yet to provide answers. Once all those questions are answered by science, religion serves no useful purpose.

The problem with this argument is that religion answers questions that science can not, in principle, ever answer. This point was brought home to me again as I was reading, of all things, a best-selling business management book called The Future of Management. The authors, Bill Breen and Gary Hamel, make this case persuasively. They begin their argument by noting that

for more than 300 years, commentators have been predicting the end of religious faith. From Auguste Comte to Richard Dawkins, they have argued that faith must inevitably crumble as scientific certitude grows. Yet faith in a divine presence continues to be one of humanity’s great common denominators. While some societies are more overtly religious than others, the majority of human beings share a belief in the transcendental.

There is no doubt about that last point. I would even say the vast majority of human beings that have ever lived shared a belief in the transcendental. So what is the mistake that Comte and Dawkins are making?

The belief that science will one day displace faith is based on a mistaken assumption that religious belief is principally a set of mystical and misguided conjectures about how the natural world works. As the sunlight of scientific discovery breaks through the black night of ignorance, so the thinking goes, these primitive superstitions will evaporate like the dew beneath the summer sun.

If religion is not primarily about explaining the laws of nature, what is it primarily about?

Religious faith is not chiefly concerned with the what, how, and when of natural phenomena. Rather, it is concerned with the why of existence. And while a few scientists may argue that the question of “why” is unanswerable and therefore not worth pursuing, they haven’t yet convinced the rest of humanity to suspend its search for significance.

Several atheists have made that point on the blog. They say that the “why” questions are uninteresting or are never going to be answered, so why worry about them? But as Breen and Hamel explain, the “rest of humanity” does care about these answers, and religion attempts to provide them. As Breen and Hamel explain, religion’s message is that

you are more than protoplasm, more than artfully yet unintentionally arranged stardust. There is a purpose to your existence. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, two sociologists who’ve studied the human foundations of faith, put it simply: “… religious explanations specify the fundamental meaning of life: how we got here and where we are going (if anywhere).” In other words, they provide answers to the eternal question of “why?”

Has religion proved successful? Yes it has.

History provides countless examples of individuals whose quiet, life-affirming faith elicited virtue, spurred charity, and restored broken lives. Scholars have repeatedly found that religious faith enhances self-esteem, improves physical health, and enlarges the capacity of individuals to cope with the traumas of life. Faith has something to teach us about resilience—not because faith itself has survived, but because faith, to the extent it provides individuals with a sense of meaning, helps make people more resilient. . . . Without a narrative that creates drama and meaning, we are listless and rudderless.

I would go on to add that Christianity, specifically, has done more to give meaning to people’s lives than any other religion. It is a force for good unparalleled in the history of the world. As great as science is, it is not even worthy to hold Christianity’s sandals.