Australian idol? Idolatry down-under and beyond

Idolatry is part of the DNA of every worldview on the planet. Rev Dr David Williams, ex- missionary to Kenya and currently CMS-Australia's Development and Training Secretary, shows us how idolatry has been the constant struggle of God's people since the Old Testament days — and takes a good hard look at our Australian culture to pinpoint some of our biggest idols.

Atieno is a Kenyan Christian. She says that she is born again, and that she follows Jesus every day. Last month, Atieno became ill. The sickness did not get better and after a few days Atieno went to see the local witchdoctor to sort out the curse that had obviously been cast on her.

Rohini is a Nepali Christian. He regularly leads Bible studies at his church. Rohini also visits the Hindu temple from time to time to make an offering for the spirits of his grandparents.

Jane is an Australian Christian. She leads primary kids at Sunday school and enjoys teaching them the Bible. On Saturdays, she loves to go shopping with a friend — it's her favourite leisure activity.

What happened when you became a Christian? According to the Apostle Paul, you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God (1 Thessalonians 1:9). You probably did not think of yourself as an idol-worshipper before you became a Christian, but that is what we all once were. Even once we are converted, we face the constant temptation to turn back to idols — as God's people did repeatedly in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament tells the story of how God creates a people who will bring his blessing to the nations. Abram is an idol worshipper (Joshua 24:2), but God gives him a new life. From this one man, God creates a nation whose whole identity is grace-given. However, this new God-created nation constantly falls back into idolatry. God's people cannot have forgotten the rescue from Egypt and their journey through the Red Sea — they still have mud on their feet! Yet at Mount Sinai they melt down their earrings into a Golden Calf. Whether it is the silver idol of Micah (Judges 17), or the Baals and Asherahs (1 & 2 Kings), or idolatry within the temple (Ezekiel 8), God's people seem incapable of turning away from idols to serve him.

For God's people to shake off the bonds of idolatry, God must give them new hearts: hearts of flesh instead of hearts of stone (Ezekiel 36:26). Idolatry is deeply embedded into their worldview, and so it takes the miracle of new birth to transform their hearts and minds.

Worldviews are the ways in which people see and understand the world around them. P.G. Hiebert defines worldview as "the foundational cognitive, affective, and evaluative assumptions and frameworks a group of people makes about the nature of reality which they use to order their lives".¹ Worldviews are the assumptions that we make about how the world works. They are formed by the stories that we grew up with; they are shaped by our experiences. Worldviews give us emotional security and define what is normal for us within our culture.

The nation of Israel should have had a worldview shaped by God's word. However, the Old Testament makes it clear that Israel was constantly tempted and influenced by the worldview of Canaanite animism. Within this worldview, the gods and spirits were understood to be locally powerful and geographically bound. The message of animism was that it was fine to worship Yahweh in general terms, but if you wanted your crops to grow in a particular location, you also had to sacrifice to the local spirits. In an agrarian society that had experienced the ravages of famine at first hand, you would do all that you could to ensure that your harvest was fruitful. The spirit world of Canaanite animism gave people a worldview that sought to control the agricultural world by engaging in local spirit worship and fertility cults. God's people were constantly tempted to make sense of the world they lived in by merging the worldview of Canaanite animism into the worship of Yahweh.

Christians today face this same struggle. We are constantly tempted to make sense of the world that we inhabit using the worldview of our immediate culture. A central part of Christian discipleship is to learn to make sense of our world using the Bible's worldview. We need to interpret our world through the lens that the Bible gives to us.

Let's go back to the stories that we started with. Atieno's culture tells her that nothing in our world happens by chance. Everything has a cause that is related to the interaction between the human world and the spirit world. So when a person gets sick, the most important thing is to find out who caused the sickness — whether the angry spirit of an ancestor or a jealous neighbour who has invoked a curse. Now that Atieno is a Christian, her worldview must be transformed by God's word. She needs to understand that the world does not operate in the way that she had thought. It does not operate in the way that all her neighbours and friends and family think. Her worldview needs to change. But this change is a difficult one, and Atieno is tempted to slip back into making sense of things using her old worldview.

As Australian Christians, we need to recognise the idols that surround us and understand our contemporary cultural worldview that makes the worship of those idols normal. We then face the significant challenge of untangling ourselves from this worldview and seeing life as the Bible says it really is. This will mean that things that we thought were normal and 'just the way things are' before we were Christians will be challenged now that Jesus is our Lord. Let me suggest four idols of the Australian worldview and four prayers that will help to transform us by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2).

Australian idol 1: money and possessions. Foundational to the contemporary Australian worldview is a set of assumptions about money, possessions and control over the future. Australians believe that they can own things like buildings, cars, money, stock and shares, and other possessions. They also believe that by accumulating wealth they can plan for the future and, in some way, control it. Inherent to this worldview is the assumption that it is good to be rich and that we should all desire to increase our net worth. On the other hand, the Bible teaches us that everything in our world belongs to God. God gives us stewardship: responsibility over things in our world, but never ownership. The Bible is also clear that while it is not wrong to be rich, it is wrong to desire to be rich (1 Timothy 6:9). I can be rich by accident but not by aspiration. Moreover, the idea that human beings can control the future by accumulating wealth is, from the Bible's point of view, completely ridiculous. Christians in Australia should reject this idolatrous worldview. One way of doing this is to pray the prayer of Proverbs 30:8 — Heavenly Father, please don't give me riches. Amen.

Australian idol 2: leisure and holidays. A second foundational assumption within the contemporary Australian worldview is the idea that we can find satisfaction and contentment in leisure activities, and particularly in holidays. Allied to this is an assumption that everyone has the right both to have holidays and, one day, to retire from work. The Bible believes in both rest and contentment. However, it teaches us that rest and contentment will only truly be found in relationship with God. In the words of Augustine: "thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee." Christians are to seek rest and contentment from our relationship with God, not from idols. So we pray — Heavenly Father, don't let me be content except in Jesus. Amen.    

Australian idol 3: family and children. For many Australians, life revolves around the children. Decisions are made to maximise children's opportunities, with all other areas of life being subsumed beneath these priorities. I know a number of people who go to church only outside of the cricket or football season. Of course, the Bible believes in families. However, Jesus also challenges us to understand that our relationship with him is more important and significant than our family relationships. So he tells us: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26). If I am a follower of Jesus, then I must be someone who loves Jesus more than I love my wife and more than I love my children. In a culture that makes idols of things like children's education, this is a sober reminder. So we pray — Heavenly Father, help me to love Jesus more than I love my children. Amen.

Australian idol 4: health and long life. My last Australian idol leads to a worldview that believes that life is basically comfortable and should be lived for as long as possible. This worldview assumes that good health is a right. Australians share an implicit belief that their country is a wonderful place to live — that nowhere else in the world could be better, and that a desire to stay here for as long as possible is perfectly rational. The Bible doesn't mention Australia, but does paint a picture of day to day life as involving suffering. Paul's greatest desire is not to live for as long as possible. His greatest desire is to die and be with the Lord Jesus (Philippians 1:23). This verse gives us another prayer that helps us to change our worldview — Heavenly Father, help me to keep believing that I'd be better off dead. Amen.

As we pray these four prayers, we will challenge the idolatrous worldview that surrounds us. If we are not paying careful attention to these issues, we will find that we slip into making sense of our world using the worldview that prevails around us.  So let's pray: Don't make me rich. Don't let me be content except in Jesus. Help me love Jesus more than I love my children. Help me keep on believing that I'd be better off dead. Sadly, they are four prayers that I have never heard prayed in my church.

P.G. Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews: an anthropological understanding of how people change. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2008), p. 25.

Want more on this topic? Check out this free MP3 resource: Tim Keller‘s Gospel Coalition conference address, 'The Grand Demythologiser: the gospel and idolatry, Acts 19'.