Idolatry and the Enemy's Lies.
Lastweek’s article began to address what the Bible tell us about dealing with the
evil and demonic in the world. One way evil deceives is under the lie of occult
powers or other “gods.”
Let’s
consider the experience of one person, we’ll call him Jack. Jack had no
religious information in his family growing up, but he had some sense there had
to be something more. By the time of his marriage, then birth of his first
child, it just made sense that there must be a God.
Now
Christianity recognizes that there are some truths about God that people can
reach by natural, God-given reason. Jack is at this point. He has a general
belief in God because his reason and life experience persuade him it must be
so. So he seeks to live a good and loving life the best he can based on that
understanding. Hopefully this general belief will enable his to inquire further
and, in God’s grace, come to know the fullness of truth in Jesus Christ.
But
what if, instead, at some point Jack is lured into exploring things like
astrology, ouija boards, psychics, fortune telling, or seeking healing from
spirit doctors, witch doctors, or mediums? What if someone gives him a
talismans and words of a prayer. Or perhaps he stumbles into more. Although we
may think we are too educated today for former pagan idol worship or the
sacrificing of animals or children or people, unfortunately, that is not the
case. Ancient superstitious and practices never stopped, they just became far
less public.
All
of this sort of thing is against reason and conscience. It is insulting to God.
Of course it is! Jack has turned away from the God he knew in his heart was
true, to instead trying to manipulate the world through magic, superstition,
and false religious practices in order to gain some personal advantage,
knowledge, or control. Now he is enslaved to the enemy.
It
is the devil and his demons who tempts us all, just as last week’s article
quoted the Bible’s words that these are the rulers of this world. They are very
real, and their agenda is to enslave us to them. We have human slavers on many
levels, but underneath every one is the devil and his demons. When we buy into
such idolatrous and superstitious practices, we willingly are signing up for
slavery to demons (Gal 4:3, 8-9).
God
says something similar towards the beginning of the Bible at the time of the
first Passover and the Exodus. God tells Moses that in the death of the
Egyptian first-born sons, that He is executing judgment on Egypt’s gods (Ex12:12). Later God strongly warns Moses that after the Exodus, when the people
come into Canaan, they are to absolutely have nothing to do with the pagan
“gods” there but to utterly overthrow them (Ex 23:24, 32-33). And how do the
Ten Commandments begin? The commandments that are to rescue us from the demonic
enslavement of idolatry in all its forms? “You shall have no other gods before
Me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image ...; you shall not bow down
to them or serve them.” (Ex 20:3-4; Deut 5:7-8; cf., Ex 23:25.) These
commandments are forever valid, always, everywhere, no exception.
To live in this world, we must not let ourselves be deceived. We must not buy into the enemy’s lies. The foundation of our hope in this world can only be in Jesus Christ.
Dibby Allan Green
Dibby Allan Green has a BA in Religious Studies (Westmont College, 1978) and MA in Theology (Augustine Institute, 2019), is a lay Catholic hermit, and a parishioner of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish.