on idolatry

It’s easy for me to scoff at those heathens with their little pinwheels, flocking to worship at Che Kung’s temple. Does such idolatry actually remain in this age? Yes it is easy to scoff, I am a man of Christ and a son of the King.

Yet I regularly offer my body in worship to Eros and Pornographia. My mind is often given to the god Ego, yes I am quite the devotee to him. My eyes worship the goddesses Masthos and Skeles on a daily basis.

Yet even that is redeemed, not scoffed at; the power of that slavery and idolatry is broken, not scoffed at.

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I recall reading about a Hebrew living in Egypt who swore by both Yahweh and Khnub.

Incredible, no? Why didn’t the Lord strike the idolater dead? Yet I commit dual-worship daily. I confess Christ yet worship myself, worship the flesh. Man cannot worship both God and money (Luke 16:13) – yet here we are.

Such is the mercy of the Lord.

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Yet temptation is no excuse for sin; witness Christ’s staunch resistance in the desert during the 40 days.

Sin crouches at your door waiting to pounce on you; it wants to own you.

Resist, yes, resist. But do so knowing that sin holds no mastery over you as it once did. When caught in a cycle of sin from which it appears there is no escape, the Christian remembers that tetelestai means it doesn’t have to be this way. Sin is finished, de-fanged and broken; it doesn’t have to be this way. The enemy persuades and over-awes us with the apparent irresistibility and invincibility of temptation – he lies. Sin grips us only as hard as we let it, though yes, we are weak, all of us, and in the thick of it we all lose sight of Christ.

But why hand over Christ’s throne in your heart to a phantom usurper? Resist, yes, resist – when we know Christ and keep him as king of our hearts, the battle is so one-sided it’s almost not a battle.