Reading as idolatry
(a little break from my recent Easter blogging pandemonium)
I wrote about reading broadly to those who don’t.
Now I’m pleading that those who do, take a break on occasion….
Ecclesiastes 12:12 “But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body” (NASB)
Reading a lot is great if you can manage! But if it ever sucks your time and energy away from God, your spouse, your children, people…you know that books have become your excessive devotion, a paper-thin, unsuspecting idol.
And they will wear you out.
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Posted on April 27, 2011, in reading and tagged reading, theology. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this after you first posted it. You bring up a good point. I’ve often struggled with replacing my time in the word with books that are about the word, and I’ve even deluded myself into believing that there is nothing wrong with that. I have pursued knowledge about the bible, the connections between the OT practices and NT theology, Greek and Hebrew words and meanings all of which are noble pursuits, but not at the expense of the relationship I have with the risen Jesus.
It’s like memorizing facts about my wife: how she takes her coffee, her favorite pair of shoes, perfume she wears, favorite food, the day she got her driver’s license, where she spent her 16th birthday. Knowing all this doesn’t make me love her. I love her, therefore, I know all this stuff.
But I want to ask you your thoughts on the following…
Would you say that our doctrines could become our idols too?
Doctrine are systems developed my human beings to help us understand the God that is too far above us. Jesus corrected many of them during his career as a Rabbi while enforcing them at the same time. Doctrines, terribly necessary in nature and certainly good in nature, have the potential to take the place of the Lord in the lives of some christians. That’s been my experience anyway.
Take the doctrine of Salvation, for example. We know with absolute certainty that salvation comes only through Jesus Christ. No other. Acts 4:12. We know that salvation comes only by the grace of God. Ephesians 2:8. We know that this requires faith. We know that this needs to involve an acknowledgement of our brokenness and a dependence on Jesus for salvation. Romans 10:9-10.
But how salvation happens, when we cross over from death to live and how that is accomplished is (in my understanding) a total divine mystery. It’s something that God does that we just believe happens because He says it does.
And this mystery has caused different traditions of faith try to answer this mystery by way of doctrine. Some says salvation occurs at baptism, and if you’ve never been baptized, then you’ve never officially been saved. Some say it happens with a prayer, and if you’ve never prayed a certain prayer, then you haven’t officially been saved.
You get the point. And Salvation is an obvious one to pick on, but there are others. Eschatological views, views of women in ministry, regeneration, on an on.
So, what do you think? Is it possible to worship doctrine?
Jake,
I love your analogy about memorizing facts on my wife. So true…theology must have as its end, a deeper love for the God we know.
I’m still chewing on your question though. A doctrine is simply a true statement or proposition about God, e.g. God is love. Can the truth that God is love be an idol? What exactly would we be idolizing? Theological books have the tendency to puff us up and make us feel better about ourselves, but doctrine is not a tangible book or concept, but a truth about God. Without doctrine, we would not know God enough to worship him. Jesus corrected rabbinic doctrines because they were wrong or incomplete, but he also stated many doctrinal truths (“I am the way”). So I don’t know that a doctrine can “take the place of the Lord” since doctrines are about the Lord. It would be like saying, “I think my wife Brianna is smoking hot, but I don’t want that to distract me from her.” Unless…the doctrines you speak of are secondary, meaning they are not what we would call core or essential doctrines of the faith. Stuff like predestination, some eschatology, church government, modes of baptism, worship wars, etc. We can easily divide over such trifling matters. I would consider THAT to be some form of idolatry…when we turn secondary doctrines into essentials, which then become our ideology.
So I don’t think you can worship doctrine, per se. But I do think you can worship ideology.
Well said! Doctrine is a truth about God. I have not ever (unfortunately) heard that said so simply and so truthfully from a pastor before. Doctrines have been difficult for me, especially since entering the ministry at churches where theirs and mine differ so greatly.
I think what I was getting at could have been better said how you put it: ideology. And the danger therein with ideology is when we turn them into doctrine. Ideologies certainly are a human attempt to understand a transcendent God. I should have made a distinction between the two.
It’s hard for me to watch certain churches justify their behavior by presenting their ideologies as doctrine, and therefore teach false doctrine. (I am referring to the ELCA’s decision regarding human sexuality last year http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Social-Statements/JTF-Human-Sexuality.aspx)
Another example of this was when I served at the church in Arizona which technically forbade Dana from receiving communion because (at the time) she was not baptized or confirmed in the Lutheran church. Their ideology of the Eucharist (which would be a secondary doctrine, I suppose) went against a command of Jesus for believers in him to “do this in remembrance of me.” I watched my wife get beat down in the name of doctrine and that left such a sour taste in my mouth. I have and continue to take that to the Lord and He’s been working on my heart to let that go.
The example you said that “God is love” and how can that become an idol is a great point. It can’t. Because it is a characteristic of the nature of God and we worship God because of who He is. So that wouldn’t make sense.