Anything that is more important to us than God is an idol. So, what is an idol? What is idolatry? An idol is something that we have placed above God. Tim Keller, in his book Counterfeit Godsanswers what an idol is this way: An idol is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, and anything that you seek to give you what only God can give. Let’s look at how others are defining modern day idolatry.Įd Stetzer, in an article called Idolatry Is Alive Today, gives this idolatry definition: Is it that a 12-inch tall piece of wood or bronze can do something bad to us? Or is it that we do something awful to ourselves when we place adoration and attention that should go to God in other things? When it comes to idolatry, the danger is not in an item… it is in us. And if we are honest, that list is pretty long. Remember, anything that becomes more important to us than God is an idol. Modern day idolatry looks different, but it’s still common. That certainly is an example of idolatry. In ancient times that would have looked like bowing down to worship a golden statue. Anything, or anyone, can become an idol if we place the value for that thing/person above our value for God. Here’s a helpful definition: An idol is when something or someone becomes more important to us than God.īy that definition even good things can become idols when we make them the ultimate things in our lives. Idolatry isn’t confined to worshipping a golden statue or praying to trinkets. This will help us identify the worship of idols in our own lives.īecause we think of idolatry as an ancient way of worshiping gods we tend to miss the idols in our own life. We are going to look at the 10 most common idolatry examples that are all around us.īefore we can do that we first need to get a better understanding of what an idol actually is. They may look different than the idols of the past, but we still practice idolatry today. Since we don’t do those things, we assume we don’t have idols.īut we do have modern day idols. We think idolatry is confined to bowing down to a golden statue in an ancient temple or praying to a wooden trinket. Part of the reason we don’t think about idol worship today is because our definition of idolatry is off.

But idolatry is surprisingly modern and very prevalent in our culture. We certainly don’t think we have modern day idols in western culture. Idol worship is contained to those who look to little wooden trinkets, a golden calf, or other images of gods for their needs. We tend to think of idolatry as a sin of the past or something in eastern mysticism.

Idols & Cons by S.S. Michaels