If you were to explore the Old Testament seeking out what sin God’s people struggled with the most you might be surprised by what you find. We tend to focus on various sins of the flesh in our concerns about ourselves. And to be sure, our fathers in the faith fought those battles. But the most common problem was idolatry. We tend to think, because we are moderns not given to bowing down before statues, that we have that sin pretty well licked. The devil, after all, is more crafty than any beasts of the field.
A closer look at Israel’s idolatry reveals that most of the time it was more subtle than what we imagine. Your typical Israelite didn’t go to bed saying his prayers to Adonai, wake up the next morning and blithely transfer his allegiance to Baal. Rather the idolatry took the form of syncretism, the blending together the worship of the living God and the worship of the gods of the broader culture. That is precisely our problem.
Looking at the problem ideologically, it seems our propensity is to embrace our own confession, while also embracing the highest creed of the broader culture- the idea that there is no true truth, only true for me and true for you, epistemological relativism. Twenty years ago a poll was taken that demonstrated that more than half of all professing evangelicals agree with this statement- “There is no such thing as objective truth.” Strange I know, given that the defining quality of an evangelical is the conviction that the evangel, the good news of Jesus Christ is objectively true. But it should not surprise us- syncretism makes for strange bedfellows.
We embrace that ideological idol, however, because of the more practical idol we embrace- the god of personal peace and affluence. It was Francis Schaeffer who coined this term to describe the god of our age. We evangelicals share in our love for this idol, seeing the function and purpose of our lives as its pursuit. Living in a relativistic age, we find our peace is challenged if we challenge the relativistic creed. Believing relativism will at least give us leeway to hold on to our truth, if we confess it is merely our truth, and not the truth, we go along to get along.
What we think sets us apart from the world is that they are pursuing the god of personal peace and affluence, and we are pursuing the god of personal peace and affluence, is that we make our pursuit while at least tipping our hat at God’s law. We want, we hunger for the idol, but at least we’d never do this, or refuse to do that, to get her. We, after all, have standards. Relativistic standards, to be sure, but at least they are our standards.
Joshua enjoined us to choose this day whom we would serve, to put away the gods of our fathers. Gideon tore down the high places. Elijah told us to no longer sway between two opinions. May He give us the grace, the strength, the courage to walk the via dolorosa, to take up our cross and follow the One who alone has the words of eternal life.
One of the biggest is “my ministry.”