Underground Exiles

I’ve recently joined a discussion group on Paul’s Letter To The Romans at ccel.org, and right now the particular passage being tackled is Romans 1.18-32.

Here’s a interesting quote on idolatry from Peter Kreeft:

“The opposite of Christianity isn’t atheism, the opposite of Christianity is idolatry.”

Martin Luther had two interesting things to say on the subject of idolatry and false religion. The first one is that, according to Luther, if you never broke the first two commandments, you could never break the other eight. Luther also said that false religion was the default mode of the human heart.

The idea that idolatry is the real root of all sin is a very powerful one. For instance, all sin is rooted in the worship of something or someone other than God. If anything other than the God that has revealed Himself in the Bible in the person and work of Jesus Christ is being worshipped, then whoever and whatever is the object of that worship is a functional savior.

If you have already mentally defined your concept of hell and your concept of heaven, you will start using someone or something other than Jesus as a functional savior to get you from your hell to your heaven. As I’ve stated on the ccel.org discussion board, if your idea of hell is being disrespected, and your idea of heaven is being respected, then your functional savior can become lying about yourself to make yourself look or seem better than you are, thereby allowing you to exit your hell and enter your heaven.

Diagramming this out might be helpful, so let me try:

(hell)–>(functional savior)–>(heaven)

disrespect by your peers –>lies about yourself–>respect from your peers

That’s kind of how it looks when you put someone or something in the place of Jesus, who is the true savior, in order to get out of hell. This idea is really important to us as followers of Christ for a couple of reasons. First, in our own lives, we have to be very careful that we constantly keep Jesus at the center of our worship. So as Christians, if we start defining hell or heaven in a way that the Bible doesn’t, we are running the risk of worshiping a savior other than Jesus. Second, in our conversations with someone who is not yet a believer in Christ, it can be helpful to know what their functional savior is, so we can prayerfully root out that functional savior in order to lead them to Jesus, who is the only One who can rescue us from hell, and lead us into heaven.