Author: jetbrane

We find the sin of Idolatry going back to the Garden in Genesis 1-3 even though such sin is not explicitly stated.

In point of fact when our first parents quit being committed to God and reflecting His image at that very moment they were replacing reverence for God with reverence for an Idol and were being conformed to the image of the Idol they had turned to and were reflecting its image.

To see the idolatry of our first parents we have to understand that the purpose of Adam & Eve’s placement in the garden.

Gen. 1:28 teaches that our first parents were to subdue the entire earth

“God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

In having dominion they were to reflect God’s image on the earth as God’s vice regents — His Stewards. In taking dominion Adam & Eve were reflecting God’s character and filling the earth with that Character.

Genesis 2:15 continues that theme,

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”

They were to serve it and guard it.

The idea of cultivating and protecting the garden was how Adam was to display the functional calling of God’s Image

Just as God subdued the Chaos they were to subdue the Garden.
Just as God ruled over all of Creation as seen in His Creative work they were to have dominion
Just as God filled the earth with teeming things they were to be fruitful and multiply themselves

This idea that Adam was set in the sanctuary Temple garden as a royal Image of God is an ancient concept that we find in other ancients contexts. Parallels from other Eastern cultures find the images of gods adorning their temples and include the idea that the King of the people is an ancient image of God.

The clearest example of this is found in the Egyptian King Rameses II (1290-1224 BC) when referring to his God inscribed, thou hast fashioned me in they likeness and thy form, which thou hast assigned to me and has created.”

“I am thy Son who thou hast placed upon thy throne. Thou hast assigned to me thy Kingdom.”

J. Richard Middleton can write on this,

“The description of ancient Near Eastern Kings as the image of a god, when understood as an integral component of Egyptian and / or Mesopotamian royal ideology, provides the most plausible set of parallels for interpreting the imago Dei in Genesis 1. If such texts … influenced the biblical imago Dei, this suggests that humanity is dignified with a status and role vis-a-vis the non human creation that is analogous to the status and role of kings in the ancient Near East vis-a-vis their subjects… As Imago Dei, then humanity in Genesis 1 is called to be representative and intermediary of God’s power and blessing on earth.”

So Adam and Eve were God’s Image in His Temple Sanctuary Garden and functionally speaking by having Dominion (guarding and serving Gen. 2:15) they were to mirror God’s glorious Image. Further in being fruitful and in multiplying they were filling the earth not merely with progeny but with image bearing progeny who would be reflectors of God’s glory.

These Image bearers however betrayed the end for which they were created by choosing to serve an Idol.

Adam failed in his divine image of dominion by not guarding the garden and allowing the Serpent into the Temple Sanctuary of God, and eventually that lack of Image reflecting guardianship eventually gave way to being ruled by the Serpent. Instead of casting the serpent out He, himself served the Serpent and was cast out.

In all of this we see the move to Idolatry. Remember that Idol worship is revering and prioritizing anything but and above God. We see this in

Adam’s allegiance shifting from God to the Serpent
Adam reflecting the Serpent’s character and not God’s

Whereas Adam had been God’s truth spokesman as seen in naming the Creating, Adam now speaks deceitfully like Satan.

Whereas Adam had trusted God’s legislative word, Adam now trusts his own word as seen in trusting the Serpent

So Adam’s shift from trusting God to trusting himself to trust the Serpent meant that Adam no longer reflected God’s image but was beginning to mirror the image of his Idol.

Perhaps the highest form of idolatry seen in the fall is the determination of Adam to make his own Word to be legislative of reality as opposed to submitting to God’s Law Word. For this sin of reflecting and mirroring the Serpent, who once upon a time determined himself to do what Adam and Eve have now done (de-God God and en-God himself by ascending to the most High,) God casts them out of the Temple sanctuary garden just as God has cast Satan out of heaven long ago.

So in this we see that the root of all idolatry is in deifying our own capacities and thereby attempt to make God of ourselves and our choices and all their implications. At the root all idolatry is human rejection of the Godness of God and the finality of God’s legislating moral authority. Idolatry always works to blur the distinction between the Creator and the creature. Man, in erecting Idols, aims at injuring God and always mortally wounds himself.

The fall displays sin to be the rearranging of existence around the self conditioned self, with the result that self conditioned self is the center of all it does. Gen. 3 teaches us that all sin thus begins with idolatry and is always in service having other gods before God.

What are your besetting sins? Whatever those besetting sins are they are besetting sins because at root some Idol of self is seeking to displace the God of the Bible in your heart.

And Idolatry is always, in the end about the Transcendent Self. Even in animistic cultures where Idols are more concrete the purpose of serving the Totem or the Idol is to ensure the worshipers of their own safety, advancement and aggrandizement. In animistic cultures the Idols are served because of how the Idols can serve the worshipers and magic is introduced as manipulative alchemy to bend the gods to ones will.

In Biblical Christianity this is flipped around. The God of the Bible serves Himself by serving His people w/ the purpose that we might serve Him. God does not exist at our disposal, we exist at God’s disposal. We are not using God to advance our autonomously arrived at agendas, God is using us to advance His agenda of ruling all the Earth.

Another characteristic of Idolatry we see in the fall is the building up and protecting of the Self. The building up of the self is obvious enough as it is seen in the refusal of the self to submit to God’s ordained order. However, the centrality of the self in Idolatry is especially seen in God’s investigation of the matter. Adam protects the Idol self by blaming Eve, and Eve protects the Idol self by blaming the Serpent. Wherever you see Idolatry you see justifications and rationalizations for behavior that a repentant self would own up to.

So, Idolatry is concerned with creating a bubble of the Self (making the self look larger and more intimidating than it really is) and it is concerned with protecting at all costs the image of the self.

Illustration — Tolkien’s Gollum (Smeagol)

Ivan Provan has said in his book, “Worshiping God in Nietzsche’s World,”

“the fundamental idolatry described by the Bible lies also at the heart of the varied modern idolatries: the idolatry of the self. The self is at the center of existence as a god: ultimate significance is found in god-like individual autonomy, self-set goals and boundaries.”

All of this explains our current infatuation with the self. We worry about our children’s self-esteem and we worry about our self-image. We talk about being self-aware and encourage ourselves to have self-confidence to overcome self-doubt. And some of these might be fine if they were set against the back drop of worshiping God as God but more often than not they are set against the back drop of the self-conditioned self and are thus seen as self worship.

Application

So what are our idols?

One might suggest that one of our chief Idols is what I might call “Nowism.”

Nowism is the idea that however things are now is how they are going to always be and as such we would do well to align our thinking w/ the “now.” Some have called “Nowism,” “Historical determinism.” It is an Idol because it is believed that it controls all.

With this kind of thinking theology is re-tooled so that whatever is fashionable now is used to reinterpret the Christian faith, or Christian ethics. And so because of “nowism,” we get the attempt to add the Belhar Confession to our confessions because the multiculturalism that it reflects is seen as a trend that just can’t end.

But the Idol of “Nowism” means also we reinterpret what is modest in light of the prevailing tendency. Nowism means that we reinterpret worship through the lens of Top 40 music and self-help psychology because that is what attracts people.

However, the Idol of “Nowism,” is a unsure thing as history is not dictated by trends that can not be overcome but it is dictated by God who is the judge over history. Imagine how inevitable “Nowism” must have been in Sodom 5 minutes before God’s judgment.

Another oldie but goodie Idol is “401K’ism.” (You can not serve both God and mammon)

Americans tend to have us much confidence in the future as they have money in the bank. We can tend to measure our status and importance by what we have that others do not have.

But 401K’ism doesn’t afflict only the wealthy. The poor can be and often are afflicted by this as seen in their envy and hatred of the wealthy simply because they are wealthy. This envy — this delighting in the failure of others even if we aren’t helped by their failure — is seen and ginned up in every political cycle as voters are reminded how unfair the economic order is.

Does your Mammon own you or do you own your mammon?

Another Idol is the Idol of power

This is seen in the domineering husband and father who rules the home not with a servants heart but with a tyrant’s intent. It is seen in the shrew and wench of a wife who will have her way no matter what and so seeks to undercut the authority of her husband at each turn. It is seen in the Boss who views his employees as his playthings or in the employee who is always conniving to displace the rightful authority of the Employer.

It is seen in the modern messianic state that claims ownership of all things, and claims the right to formulate laws without any reference to transcendent moral absolutes. Because it is a Idol of power it seeks to reduce other authorities to impotence such as local magistrates, family, and Church.

Another Idol is the Church and what passes for Christianity

It is an Idol because of its compromise with the idols of the age and its refusal to serve no God but God. When we so prioritize the Church simply because it is called “the Church,” that we turn a blind eye ourselves to the idols of our age we have committed Churcholatry.

Of course anything can become an Idol. We can love our family so much that it displaces God and so we are guilty of familolatry. Many men have been guilty of workoltry, and yet work is a positive good. In our culture there seems to be a tendency towards Celbrity-olatry, but I think we could file that also under Nowism since the celebrity reflects the “now.”

It may be the most difficult thing in life to constantly keep our Idols in check. We are self-deceivers and it is difficult for us to see the truth about ourselves. But if we are to press on in Christ likeness we have to be careful of idols we might create.

Conclusion:

G. K. Beale

“God has made humans to reflect Him, but if they do not commit themselves to Him, they will not reflect Him but something else in creation. At the core of our beings we are imaging creatures. It is not possible to be neutral on this issue: We either reflect the Creator or something in creation…. All humans have been created to be reflecting beings, and they will reflect whatever they are ultimately committed to, whether the true God or some other object in the created order…. We resemble what we revere, either for ruin or restoration.”

Text — Ex. 22:18; Lev. 19:26, 31; 20:6, 27; Deut. 18:10-11; Isa. 8:19; Micah 5:12; Mal. 3:5; Acts 8:18f; Acts 13:4-12; II Tim. 3:8, Gal. 5:20

Heidelberg Catechism — Q. 94-95

Q. 94. What does the Lord require in the first commandment?

A. That I must avoid and flee all idolatry, Magic, enchantments, invocation of saints or other creatures because of the risk of losing my salvation. Indeed, I ought properly to acknowledge the only true God, trust in him alone, in humility and patience expect all good from him only, and love, fear and honor him with my whole heart. In short, I should rather turn my back on all creatures than do the least thing against his will.

Subject — Magic
Theme — God’s forbidding of Magic
Proposition — God’s forbidding of magic should cause us to look to see if a magical worldview impinges on our thinking today as modern men so that we might forswear it.

Introduction

We are not talking this morning about Magic as entertainment. Not talking about Card tricks, pulling rabbits out of hats, or illusions.

Magic — Definition

“Any action of man whereby he attempts total control over the powers of nature and other men so has to manipulate nature and men to a unnatural end.”

Magic is the attempt by man to gain control over the world of man, nature, and the supernatural. In magic, man attempts to become god over all things and to assert his power and control over all reality. According to Kurt Koch:
At the threshold of human history stands the command of God: Replenish the earth and subdue it (Gen. 1:28). The task and right of man was the peaceful conquest of the earth’s powers in agreement with the will of God. In opposition to this command, Satan, the great master of confusion, made the arch-temptation: Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:5). The antithesis of the command of God is magic, hunger of knowledge and desire for power in opposition to the will of God. With this, young mankind found itself at the crossroads. Kurt Koch — “Between God & Satan”

Its purpose, according to Scripture, is to divert people from God to man (Isa. 8:19).

Magic thus becomes a religion in as much as it is attached to controlling reality through the control of Idols.

Religion — “Submission to that which is ultimate” — Dr. Paul Tillich

Biblical Religion — Man submitting to the triune God moving in terms of God’s law Word and handling all things in light of God’s Word.

Magic — Man submitting only to himself through his Idols and seeking through manipulation total control over all reality.

Pagan man sought that control via incantation and what we moderns consider strange rituals.

Modern man seeks that control via social manipulation by any and all means. What is important though is that in both cases what is being sought are the instruments to control via one’s own fiat word other men and all reality in a way that is not in harmony with God and His Word. In both the animistic or ancient world and the modern world magic is a means of deception whereby man seeks, by power of his fiat word, to alter real reality.

Modern man laughs and scoffs at the Shaman, Witch Doctor, or Druid in the third world with their slain chickens, and feathers and bones and yet modern man seeks every bit as much to leverage Magic in order to manipulate his reality to move in terms of his fiat word as the Shaman, Witch Doctor and Druid.

And yet Modern man engages in his own type of magic in order to manipulate & control his world & the world around him.

Modern man still looks to Shamans, Witch Doctors, and Druids to leverage magic in order to manipulate reality to move in terms of his fiat word.

Different Modern Expressions of Magic

I.) Much of Psychology is nothing but a form of Magic

Remembering that we have defined magic as the attempt to use raw power (consider Simon the magician’s desire for power in Acts 8) to gain total control over men and / or situations with the purpose of manipulating them to move not in terms of God’s authority but in terms of man’s fiat (self-legislating) word.

And this is what much of Psychology / Psychiatry / Counseling does. It does not look to God’s word for authority and insight but rather seeks to control men through theories that come from a worldview that is distinctly non-Christian. The humanist psychologist seeks through his fiat theories and therapeutic word to magically create alternate realities whereby his patient is magically cured.

The Shaman … can be viewed as a early psychotherapist.

Herbert Benson M. D.
Harvard Professor

There is abundant evidence in many forms of modern thought, especially the so called “prosperity” psychology “will power building,” and systems of “high pressure,” salesmanship black magic has merely passed through a metamorphosis, and although its named be changed, its nature remains the same.”

Manly P. Hall
Masonic, Hermitic & Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy — pg. C1, C11
Cited from Dave Hunt’s Occult Invasion, pg. 432

We too often forget that psychology as a discipline originated in the attempt to understand man without taking into consideration the God of the Bible. Previously man had been understood in terms of God, but with Psychology man would now be understood without God and the elite would be able to control man through this understanding of man. Psychology thus became a kind of magic that accepted almost unquestioningly in all of our institutions, including our Churches.

And so this discipline that began with feeling the bumps on people’s heads as become a form of magic consulted in how to manipulate people to act in ways that are uninformed by God’s revealed word. The psychologist, like the Shaman of old, uses incantations and rituals in order to alter someone’s perception and to gain control.

We remember that we are talking about magic, and in order to reinforce our understanding of what magic is we offer another definition from M. Stanton Evans,

“In it’s most fundamental terms pagan magical mentality is an effort to obtain the secret knowledge which will give one mastery over nature and other people. As such it has long been a component of the modern outlook. Much of what passes these days as science, (Scientism is the more accurate term) is in fact magic in modern dress. Scientism and magic appear together at the age of the Renaissance … and have been ingredients in secular thought ever since.”

II.) This definition of magic thus brings us to another modern expression of Magic in the modern world and that is Scientism.

Alduous Huxley’s book Brave New World” opens in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. The year is a.f. 632 (632 years “after Ford”). The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning is giving a group of students a tour of a factory that produces human beings and conditions them for their predestined roles in the World State. He explains to the boys that human beings no longer produce living offspring. Instead, surgically removed ovaries produce ova that are fertilized in artificial receptacles and incubated in specially designed bottles. The Hatchery destines each fetus for a particular caste in the World State.

Science is being used, in Huxley’s novel, as magic in order to give sovereign man the ability to have totalitarian control over his world. Man is the idol and science is used as magic in order to control the idol.

But, Huxley’s BNW w/ it’s use of science as a means of magic is not that far fetched from our own world. We don’t quite control birth by caste yet but we do do things like abort 90% of babies diagnosed in utero with downs syndrome thus taking into our own hands the prerogative of God. The push for abortifacients by our Federal gov’t. in our name is nothing but magic seeking totalitarian control. Interestingly enough “pharmakiea” (poisoner) is the word used for “sorcery” (a aspect of magic) in Gal. 5:20

According to Luther (Luthers Works, Vol 27)

“According to Jerome sorcery is called the poisonous art; for the Greek word ‘pharmakon’ means poison or medicament. Hence a sorceress is called poisonous. Therefore the apostle is referring to magicians, wizards, enchanters, and any others who, by means of compacts with devils, deceive their neighbors, harm them, and steal from them.”

Further we use science to control people through drugs and there is work going on in developing designer medicines in order to bring forth a particular personality profile for certain occasions.

I would submit that there are times when there is more sorcery about science than there is science about science.

Of course Science is good and pleasing to God as it is consistent with a Biblical worldview but when Science seeks to overthrow Biblical theology and seeks instead to absolutize itself it becomes a form of magic as it seeks a control that is inconsistent with God’s Word.

Remember, Science is only as good as the Theology it descends from. So, when Science goes outside the bonds of Biblical theology it is serving some other god or gods and when it becomes absolutized so that by its power it seeks total control of man it becomes a form of magic and is thus to be supped with, with a long spoon by Christians.

III.) Another Modern Expression of Magic is our Political Structures

Rose L Martin in her book High Road to Socialism in the U.S.A, 1884-1966, quoted G. D. H. Cole as stating that an objective of socialism is the “abolition of God.”[2]

Remember we said that the purpose of magic is to divert people’s attention away from God and His word and as the State seeks to be the all encompassing arbiter of good and evil legislating for against it the politicians and bureaucrats who comprise the state become a league of magicians.

On this point R. J. Rushdoony could say,

“(The State) plan(s) to abolish sin and guilt, poverty, disease, and hunger, even death itself, and create a new paradise on earth. The new politics is a politics of total control, and it therefore hates God, because God represents a roadblock to power. God is the enemy who must be destroyed so that man can become his own god.”

Non-Christians like Orwell and Huxley in their novels “1984” and “BNW” both understood this totalitarian and magical aspect of the State in defiance of orthodox Christianity, and the reality that the State seeks to use fiat legislative magic to overthrow God explains the hostility of the State towards those who are epistemologically self conscious Christians.

When the Bureaucrats and legislators create and enforce fiat humanist legislation that is unrelated into God’s law they are preforming a kind of magic whereby they are seeking, by means of deception, to use their power to control men. Their words in their legislation thus becomes a kind of “magic spell,” which is cast in order to get people to do their bidding.

IV.) Another important area where magic prevails today is in art.

Here I am borrowing from RJR’s chapter 12 in Law & Liberty

T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, in his study, Mona Lisa’s Mustache: A Dissection of Modern Art, observed that “modern art is not modern at all. It is a revival of one of the oldest systems for getting power. It is a revival of magic.”

The modern artists are totalitarians who despise man and liberty. As Robsjohn-Gibbings noted,

According to the futurists, “Man has no more significance than a stone.” We find Kandinsky, the leader of expressionism, writing haughtily of “the vulgar herd,” and “the mob,” we find the surrealists insisting on the “greatest possible obliteration of individuality,” and Picasso, the leader of cubism, calling for “a dictatorship of one painter.”

To men such as these, art could be only a medium through which they would gain power over the fellow beings they consider so insignificant. So art becomes like a Kewpie doll used by a Voodoo Witch Doctor in order to inflict disorder into people’s reality.

The modern magical artist hates above all to be moral, law-abiding, and meaningful; he belongs in his imagination to an elite group whose purpose is to smash the present order and remake it totally in terms of their own elitist plans. According to one artist’s manifesto, “The artist ‘should be understood as a contemporary magician … How are we to wield power; how are we to influence:’ and not ‘Are we scientists or poets?’ is the question to be posed … Seers, we are for the magic of life.”

Modern art seeks to destroy God’s meaning, to obliterate it from man’s mind, so that man will no longer see God’s order in things but will relearn all things as taught by magical art. Its purpose thus is total brainwashing.

Modern art thus becomes a kind of visible sorcerer’s spell by which the viewer is hexed into accepting the meaning of non-meaning as cast by the Artist.

The magic of the Artist is found in his ability to thrust a hexed people into chaos where integration into the void is the goal by the means of a artistic spell that leads people into concluding that meaning, at best, is person variable. The hope of the magician Artist is that out of chaos order will arise. Those who are deceived by the Sorcerer artists’s hex will increasingly discard meaning and order as declared by God’s interpretation of reality but will instead re-interpret reality according to the spell of the Sorcerer Artist.

It is a form of magic … sorcery.

Conclusion

We fail to see how we are given to magic in our culture because we tend to think that the magical worldview belongs only to animistic cultures. We don’t take seriously God’s word or the Heidelberg Catechism’s injunction against magic because having become so used to the magic around us we fail to see it for magic.