When Theology Becomes Idolatry

The theme of idolatry is explicit and relentless in the Old Testament. “There is only one God, worship Him alone” is the repeated refrain. Today, if idolatry is addressed at all in Christian circles, it is usually reduced to pagan or animistic worship or undue materialism, although there is little specificity as to how much materialism is undue!

Concurrently reading Isaiah and a novel recounting pagan beliefs a number of years back brought me to a deeper understanding of the insidious nature of our idolatry today. Although most of us would understand the idea of appeasing the gods and doing things like sacrificing something or someone to make them happy, it is the hidden agenda that is really the problem. Anything I do in order to get any “god/God” to do what I want is idolatry, and possibly it’s closely related neighbour, witchcraft. It is about control. And that is the root of our problem. Rather than allowing God (as the omnipotent, omniscient Creator) to have control over what goes on in and around our lives, we want to tell Him how to do it, and what we want. This is also the basis of the “works”, spoken of in the New Testament, by which we might try to make God love us more, or at least, not smite us.

So where do I get off suggesting that our theology could actually be idolatry?

As I read forums and hear people speak, I struggle at times with the surety of some that they have the “right theology” and further, that anyone who believes differently is condemned and maybe even of the devil. Quite possibly a few, if they have read this far, may already be condemning me in that same way. 

The problem I have, though, is not that I disagree with those beliefs necessarily. It is more that when we think we have arrived and know it all, we are in grave danger of making our personal understanding our god. We can wrap God/god up in a neat box and say “this is what He is like; this is what He likes/doesn’t like; this is how you have to behave/what you have to do to please Him”. And basically, we then condemn anyone who doesn’t agree with us one hundred percent, or has had a different experience of God. And I would suggest that this condemnation comes from ‘liberals’ as much as ‘fundamentalists’.

It is at this point that I am again and again reminded of the Jews in Jesus’ day and how sure they were of what Messiah would look like, what He would do, and how neatly they had packaged their faith. Jesus was not what they were expecting or looking for. In fact He offended many of them precisely because He refused to conform to their theology.

Again, we see this theme through both the Old and New Testaments; God never seems to do the same thing twice. In fact, it has been suggested that Moses lost his opportunity to get to the Promised Land because he second guessed God as doing that same thing again with getting water from the rock (Numbers 20:1-12). Jesus healed a number of blind people and crippled people, but we see Him spitting in mud, forgiving sins and simply touching people to bring that healing. There was no “one size fits all”. I like to think that this is because of our tendency to “formulise” everything: “This is how you do it”.

More than anything, God wants us to have a relationship with Him where we are dependent on Him, where we look to Him in confidence that He knows best, rather than growing in confidence of our own ability to follow a formula. We also tend to neglect the reality that each of us needs our healing and growth to come in a different way, as each of us is unique. Our experiences, good and bad, our personality, our family history, all these go together to bring us to the point we are today. This is so complex that only God could possibly know what is required to bring us to wholeness in Him.

Our desire for expediency, efficacy and orderliness steers us back toward programs and processes. Although these can be helpful and valuable, ultimately they can only be loose packing around our journey or we ascribe them more authority and power than God. It is only God working through these as He chooses that gives them any potential; we must submit them to Him consistently, or we elevate them higher than they deserve.

Doctrine, orthodoxy and dogma all come from the same root. It is about beliefs and about opinions, and as much as we would like to get it “right” in our theology, we are finite and God is not, so at best our theology is restricted or partial. And there is a very fine line between doctrine and dogma and it is often very blurry. In addition, in our desire to be precise and unambiguous, we can lose sight of the limits of our finiteness, and so we discredit that which others see from their different perspective.

This does not mean that we should accept every different understanding without question. We still need to be discerning. However, when we listen to others with one ear and God with the other, I think we might find that they are in tune more often than we realise. And in the end, no doctrine, creed or theology will give us complete understanding of God. This only grows and develops as our relationship with God deepens. The question is whether we will remain open and trusting enough to allow Him to reveal to us those things that challenge and confront us up to the next level of relinquishment or whether we are happy to set up camp where we are comfortable and can remain more or less in control.

“In that twilight zone of...double standard, orthodoxy is really just a word for my doxy. Heterodoxy means everyone else’s doxy.”

Hywel Williams; Let Us All Err and Stray; The Guardian (London, UK); Jul 8, 2003.