Flee Idolatry

Therefore, my brethren, flee idolatry.  1 Cor. 10:14 (NKJV)

Are idols and idolatry matters relevant to us today?  Such words and the ideas behind them are highly relevant to any study of the 1 Corinthian Epistle and indeed to large portions of the OT.  But what about for us, living in the here and now?

Have “idols” become only relics suitable for archaeologists and students of ancient history and, thereby, “idolatry” not something that happens around us, to us, or from within us?

Your (and my) answer is really important, and is the subject for the below extended discussion.

What is the Meaning of Idolatry?

We should here, as always, begin with the meaning of words.  They weren’t fooling around when our elementary school teachers, probably the librarians, drilled into us the importance of dictionaries.  Dictionaries are essential not just for the obvious need to tell us about the meaning of words we do not know but also for important words that we may not grasp fully or, even worse, have a garbled version of their real meaning stashed in our heads.

The Word Shopping Basket

It is helpful to separate the role of a word as a signifier with its role as a content / meaning placekeeper.  Let’s think of a simple shopping basket as is used in a grocery or drug store, either a metal one with wheels or a plastic one with handles.  Let us given the basket a particular distinguishing name, as we would our child (or car, as one should for any vehicle one owns, just as has been done for millennia for boats).  Let’s call the first basket IDOLATRY.

Now let us head for a store that provides words that convey meaning for any ‘shoppers’ word basket.  Think of the place as WordMart.  For the English language there are about 600,000 separate words in WordMart, about five times larger than the number of different items sold in a typical Walmart.  As with a Walmart, we don’t shop hundreds of thousands of items, as we only need a small percentage of what’s there, that we must know enough to find what we need to place in our basket according to the job at hand.

In order to manage shopping in a Walmart one must know something about food or clothing or changing one’s engine oil in order to navigate to the right section of the store and pick out what one needs.  Similarly in WordMart, one cannot enter that vast store literally knowing nothing in terms of English words.  A very rough guideline is the “average” English speaker (in the U.S.) learns about 1,000 words a year (such guideline does not work for the first two or so years of life, but by age five it is about right, and it effectively ends as a guideline at about the age of early adulthood, say 20 to 30 years old).

So by some measure of adulthood one should know about 20,000 words even without specialized or advanced education.   The college experience adds many more words to a person’s vocabulary, and post-college programs (such as Ph.D studies in science / engineering, Med School, Law School, and the like) add many more words, many highly specialized:  such as Planck’s Law and  constant, choledocholithiasis, and voir dire (as Yogi Berra said many times:  “you can look it up”).  If one wants to learn the NT in its original (Koine) Greek, one is confronted with more than 5,000 of them, which is actually not all that many considering the value they have.  Who has the largest vocabulary as evidenced by actual use?  The award usually goes to Shakespeare as he used about 25,000 unique words in his collected works, and no doubt knew many more.  To answer the slug’s question, or more-usefully that of a non-native English student, want is the minimum number of words needed to have a functional ability to understand anything non-trivial, can be estimated by the smallest vocabulary translation of the Bible:  the EasyEnglish Bible is a complete translation that uses only 1200 different words; it’s pretty basic, but it works.

Four Conditions of Word Meaning

Back to our basket named “IDOLATRY” and visit to WordMart.  What we have to realize as we enter WordMart is that our named basket is empty.  Our starting situation is that we have only a name, a signifier or pointer, that signifies or points to nothing; our basket is empty.  To grasp this consider the following four conditions with regard words we are trying to understand and apply.

1. We are confronted with a  word that is truly out-of-experience, such as choledocholithiasis.
2. We encounter a word that we recognize from some previous encounter but don’t recall much about it, such as the word winsome.
3. Our word is one we know well, for instance….water.
4. Finally, consider a word that we think we know, but actually we mis-know, that is what we believe such word signifies is not what it truly should; here our example will be the word in question… idolatry.

As we stand at the entrance of WordMart with our basket (designating the name or signifier of something) each of the above four conditions leads us to different actions.  With the first condition, our basket named choledocholithiasis, we know we do not know what that word signifies so we go to the “C Aisle” of WordMart and search for other words we can put into our basket signified by the word we do know and which added words into the basket can be lock-step associated with choledocholithiasis so that when confronted with that long unusual word we mentally immediately replace it as a signifier with the other words we have in our basket and so have its meaning.  For this example we would get from the WordMart shelf words such as:  gall bladder, organ in the human body, stones, deposits, calcium, and so forth, that we would likely simplify as gall stones. and perhaps our uncle Fred who had his gall bladder removed because of them.

With Condition 2, using the example word of winsome, we might choose a different course in WordMart.  We may recall that the word means a description of something favorable, generally speaking (and not as Yogi Berra might have said:  “you win some, and you lose some”), and that may seem to us sufficient for present purposes.  So we say to our selves we don’t need a visit to WordMart, a decision our brain may make in a tenth of a second, or we may pause and think about for a few seconds, before moving onto our reading or listening.  However, skipping the WordMart because of laziness or false confidence does have its consequence:  we miss grasping the richness of the word, namely “winsome:  generally pleasing and engaging often because of a childlike charm and innocence” (Merriam-Webster definition).

For Condition 3, for the example of the word water, we have no pause at all for even the notion of a visit to WordMart.  We have since childhood made a signifying lock-step connection between water and that amazing liquid of our life, from drinking, washing, to recreational experiences.  This signifier connection is so strong that we have no recognition that there is any connection at all.  The word water does not really standalone in our brains.  It is immediately supplanted by a rich panoply of associations with which we are very familiar and which we apply as needed to the given context.

Finally, for Condition 4, and our present word idolatry, we are in a very tricky situation because we are familiar with the simple word (clearly derived from at the simple word idol, a single-syllable four-letter word), that we’ve heard or read multiple times especially if we’ve read the Bible, though it is a familiar word even in our secular culture.  Think about the consequences of mis-knowing something important.  What if we were to take a very important paper, say a receipt for an insurance premium that has been paid, and instead of putting such receipt in a folder marked “Insurance Papers” we mis-file it in a folder marked “Investments?”   Later, if we need such paper it would not be available to us as it should have been, but we would know that it is missing, so we would know that we do not know, and begin to hunt in adjoining folders under the theory it’s there somewhere.  But what if some demon had entered into our filing, taken out the correctly filed receipt and replaced it with a false one, and did so in a magical way so that at the same time such replacement occurred it also changed our brain’s memory association?  Now we would not know that we don’t know.  Instead we would “know” what is false, a far worse condition than knowing we don’t know.

If our word basket is filled with false words off the shelves of WordMart then a basic, underlying corruption in our thinking is the result.  Every time we then encounter the word signifier (the name of that word basket) we will have it near-instantaneously associated with falsehoods.

If we had an Enemy who hated the Word of God, isn’t that exactly what he would be doing all the time by every means possible?  Answer:  yes we have such an Enemy with countless assistants, some demonic some human, doing just that, every hour of every waking day, in every way possible.

Why Does Word Signifier Error Matter, Really?

We all experience word signifier error in our heads and in our culture.  It is the grounds for almost all humor.  One classic example is the Abbot and Costello routine known as “Who’s on First?” where as the routine unfolds it’s about a player whose name is “Who” and is playing first base in a baseball game; and, as the joke continues, a guy named “What” is playing second base, and so on.  It’s on YouTube and it’s hilarious.

We have everyday experiences, some not so funny, between husbands and wives, parents and children, employers and employees, employees and customers.  Sometimes the issue is just mis-remembering a detail about a past event, and in other situations it is remembering the same past event but remembering in exactly the opposite way.  We’ve all experienced this, and likely tend to do so more often as we get older.

But does any of this matter?  Turning our attention to the Bible, does all word signifier errors create for us (or others) serious problems?  Consider the example of the Sermon on the Mount.  It is on the short list of the most-famous passages in the Bible and its phrases are part of our culture (“turn the other cheek”).    Suppose we recall it to be in the Gospel of Mark, and a friend says “no,” it’s actually in Luke’s Gospel?  What’s the consequence?  Well for us, we’ll search Mark in vain because it is not in that book.  But all is not completely right for our friend, as Luke’s Gospel does not have what we know as “The Sermon on the Mount” but what is sometimes half-humorously called “The Sermon on the Plain.”  (Jesus gave different versions of the same great message on multiple occasions in multiple settings).  In Luke Ch  6 we have recorded a shortened version of the more well-known, long version that begins in Matt Ch 5.  So what is the consequence of this mis-signifying error of us (Mark) and in a certain aspect of our friend (Luke)?  No real significance because it is not doctrinal.  We all know that this famous Sermon is in the NT somewhere and we now will stumble around a bit before we find it, and along the way actually expand our understanding by recognizing a parallel passage in Luke that we may not have previously known, and along the way had a refreshing excursion through the Gospel of Mark recognizing that Mark’s Gospel was more focused on Christ’s deeds than His discourses.

But what about mis-knowing, wrongly signifying, our present word idolatry?  What if we have lock-step assigned shopping basket named idolatry to words and ideas such as:  prostrating before a golden calf,  loving Egypt, misbehaving in Sinai, pressuring Aaron, horrifying Moses, causing the shattered tablets of the Ten Commandments, following Baal, abhorring the practices of the Canaanites?  Would the limits of this signifying connection be a bad thing?  The answer, I believe, is affirmatively and emphatically “yes” it would be a bad thing for reasons I give below.  But for the moment, consider the following consequence of such word signifying condition:  by all the above connections the signification is to a “them,” a category of someone else besides me, so that the word idolatry is not and cannot be about me or those around me.  If that is incorrect, that is a big deal.  Would our Enemy delight in such an outcome?

Idolatry in 1 Corinthians 10

1 Corinthians 10 begins with a recounting of the Israelites led by Moses in the wilderness.  This is recounted in the OT books of Exodus (after the miraculous escape from Egypt), Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  The events occur over a period of about 40 years sometime in the 1400s BC, about 1500 years prior to the writing of the 1st Corinthian Epistle, and involving a people racially different from the Corinthians and culturally vastly different from the Corinthians.

Yet the opening paragraph of Ch 10 makes clear that at the essence of being, down at our deepest human level, the Corinthians then, and the application is that us readers in the here and now, are exactly like those rebellious wanderers even though some 2500 years and 10,000 miles and desert verses technology-rich cultures distinguish our environment.

Consider this portion of 1 Corinthians 10 (NKJV).

⁵ But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

 

⁶ Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. ⁷ And do not become idolaters as were some of them. As it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” ⁸ Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell; ⁹ nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents; ¹⁰ nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer. ¹¹ 

 

Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

 

¹² Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. ¹³ No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.

 

¹⁴ Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

The closing phrase of the above passage, flee from idolatry, has been put in bold font here to highlight it as the conclusion and also because the verb “flee” is in the imperative condition in the Gr NT, identifying it clearly as a present command.

So we have to decide, does this command, apply to us?  In other words, considering the above passage, so what?  Or as our present culture likes to express things:  “whatever?”

The passage can be dismissed from relevance by thinking that (1) this is only Paul, a Jew who had a vision on a road to nowhere we know, concerning nothing we can directly know, that occurred some 2000 years ago in a vastly different age and culture, and/or (2) this is clearly and only written to some rag tag group of followers (with some pretty unseemly practices as recounted earlier in Paul’s Letter) and so the value of the text is purely historical, and/or (3) idols and idolatry has long been purged from our culture unless one has wandered into some far off land where people are frozen in time and still practice making objects that they believe are gods.

If we buy into any of such three dismissals, then the effect, following or shopping basket analogy, is that we have no need to visit WordMart because (1) we ‘know’ what the word idolatry signifies, or (2) even if we don’t know, it doesn’t matter because such word is about someone who is not us, namely the proverbially “them.”  (“Them” is always a handy escape category because “them” is not the person I see in the mirror).  And, so, the imperative command flee does not apply to me.  So, I can move right along, nothing to see here.

Really?

The Connection Between Idolatry and Coveting

The word idolatry (and idols) occurs in multiple places in the NT, not just the Corinthian Epistles.  Further, such word is closely tied to another important word:  covet, as it to covet and coveting, covetous, covetousness.

Consider the below passage from Colossians 3 (NKJV):

¹ If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. ² Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. ³ For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

⁵ Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

⁶ Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, ⁷ in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.

Col. 3:5 above, identifies four foul conditions, ending with the word highlighted above, covetousness.  They are:

1. fornication
2. uncleanness
3. passion
4. evil desire

We will need to pass by a careful examination of what these words signify to stay on our subject.  In the Gr text, these words are all adjoined one after the other (there were no commas or other such punctuation in the Koine Gr of that time).  After the words translated evil desire, does occur an important punctuation-like word in Gr, namely:  kai, which can be translated simply as “and,” as is done in the NKJV above, but often it has a richer significance, as a pointer to the conclusion or culmination, which is sometimes translated by the word even or possibly a word phrase conveying the idea of therefore.  Such is I believe the situation here, because we have the critical added phrase after the word covetousness, namely bu with additional, ending phrase of the verse:  which is idolatry.

Transgressive Sin

So I believe the above text is telling us that the four above enumerated words are giving us dimensions of a deeply transgressive error (sin).  There is sin, and there is transgressive sin, a different and worse kind.  Although all sin is a transgression against God, there are some sins that are so innately transgressive that they disclose something deep and wicked within the human heart, namely our hatred toward and our defiance against God Himself.  It’s an awful thought to have about ourselves, and one we don’t like to harbor.  We rather think of ourselves as imperfect, and a sometime bumbler and mistake-maker, as in “we are all human, we all make mistakes.”  But there is something much more evil within each of us, much more sinister.  We are not just about choosing some pleasure of the flesh that we ought not, like that second bowl of ice cream.  We are choosing to be like God, instead of God, as Eve did, as did Adam.  It’s an awful thing to write this, and to make that claim about you and me, but it is a true condition in our natural, totally fallen state.  Depravity is real.  And I know where to find it.  And it finds me.  (Hint:  it’s closer than a millisecond away).

What, Then, is Covetousness?

We tend to think of coveting as a passionate wanting of something we do not have.  Advertising in our culture is all about instilling this in us, often by cunning phrases such “you are entitled to…” or “you deserve….”

Like sin, not all coveting is the same thing.  Coveting a newer or nicer car or bike of smart phone is one thing.  Coveting a second spouse is something beyond, a transgressive form of it.  Coveting to be “my own” captain / master, as in the famous poem Invictus (“I am the captain of my fate, the master of my soul…”) or Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself” is something even further down into the transgressive abyss.

What lies here at the true bottom of all bottoms, is the root coveting of wanting to be my own ‘god.’  Being so, gives me sovereignty (however delusional it is), allowing me to declare “what feels good, is good” because, if I am indeed god, then what I want is what I’m entitled to both as to the wanting itself and the feeling good about such wanting.  (The satisfaction of a wanting is never enough:  such requires the further satisfaction that such wanting itself was right and good, and even further the satisfaction that all other ‘gods’ around me are in complete agreement with my such wanting, even to the extent of joining me in the worship of me, which seems to be in essecence what Facebook devotees are up to).

The Ten Commandments

Let us return our attention back to the Sinai desert.  God gave His Law to Israel through the hand of Moses.  It was highlighted by the famous Ten Commandments but it was supplemented by more than 600 additional demands of God as recorded in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and applied in the balance of the OT history, writings, and prophets.

The Ten Commandments are of course a list.  Like many lists, I believe such one has a structure.  They are first given in Exodus 20, as below (NKJV):

¹ And God spoke all these words, saying:

I have highlighted the 1st and 10th Commandments by the bold font to indicate what I believe is an important bracketing.  The list begins with the clear command that we are to have no other gods, which must include the god of my own heart, in whatever way such heart might manifest my ‘god-ness.’  The list ends with the command that I not covet (basically) anything.  These two bracketed commands are interconnected.  Coveting is the inner condition of seeking something other than God, which as a life-framework is actually having another ‘god,’ namely me!  Thus, in a certain real sense, my coveting is the evidence of my heart’s deepest expression that I seek to be another god.

The Creation

These Ten Commandments were not the expression of an entirely new idea.  They derive from the beginning of all time, namely the beginning of the entire story of the Bible which begins at the Creation of all space-time by the One and Only God:

Gen. 1 ¹ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was^[a] on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

³ Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

God, literally, dramatically, and beyond human comprehension spoke space-time into existence.  There is no existence of anything now or ever whose very being was not contingent upon God the Creator.  His very name given to Moses is one of His primary distinctives, that he is the Always Being One:

Ex. 3 ¹³ Then Moses said to God, “Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?”

¹⁴ And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

The highlighted text above has almost no possible full translation into the words of any language because of the incomprehensibility of the disclosure, namely:  The God is uniquely, absolutely uniquely, the One with Eternal Being, non-contingent, not derived, not Himself a creation of another.  That is His Being, His Ontology.  We are the work, literally, of His Creation, and accountable to Him.  Of course we should have no other ‘gods’ before us.  Further, we should be delighting in what He has done from within our deepest being.  Accordingly, we should not covet, particularly transgressively covet anything else, especially, particularly covet making a claim that we ourselves are god.

And God’s “I AM” claim and signifier is not limited to Exodus 3.  Seven times recorded in the Gospel of John, Jesus claims of Himself that He is “I AM.”  (some English translations, though meaning well, obscure this dramatic claim by adding “He” after His “I AM” claim because English grammar seems to require it, but translating it so obscures a great truth).

Consider this well translated verse in the NKJV:

John 8:58 Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, IAM.”

Other similar constructions occur at John 9:9; 13:13; 18:5, 6, 8.   And such special construction brings to life other passages in John such as John 14:3-20, 15:1-5; and 17:16

Coveting and Adultery

In OT there is a close association between the deepest sexual transgressions, adultery and fornication, with the obvious matter of coveting but more importantly with the deeper root issue of idolatry.

The book of the Prophet Hosea is intertwined with the connection of physical adultery and spiritual adultery.  Hosea’s awful experiences with his wayward wife, her violation of the 10th Commandment, were a portrayal of Israel’s transgressive waywardness spiritually with respect violating the 1st Commandment of seeking other gods.

Consider also the passages in Jeremiah and Ezekiel that connect coveting with adultery with idolatry.  Recall that Jeremiah wrote during the end years of the remnants of the presence of Israel in the Promise Land with its Temple and the actual 10 Commandments in Jerusalem.  Then Ezekiel wrote primarily during the period of the exile caused by God’s expulsion and judgment upon Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple, using the army of Babylon.  Both these prophets were led to proclaim God’s explanation for how the promise of the Promise Land had to be (for a time) extinguished.

Consider these verses:

• Jeremiah:  3:8, 9; 5:7; 7:9; 23:14; 29;23
• Ezekiel:  16:31; 23:37

And, in particular:

Jer. 3:  ⁶ The Lord said also to me in the days of Josiah the king: “Have you seen what backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and there played the harlot. ⁷ And I said, after she had done all these things, ‘Return to Me.’ But she did not return. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it. ⁸ Then I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but went and played the harlot also. ⁹ So it came to pass, through her casual harlotry, that she defiled the land and committed adultery with stones and trees. ¹⁰ And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah has not turned to Me with her whole heart, but in pretense,” says the Lord.

 

Ez. 16:  ³¹ “You erected your shrine at the head of every road, and built your high place in every street. Yet you were not like a harlot, because you scorned payment. ³² You are an adulterous wife, who takes strangers instead of her husband. ³³ Men make payment to all harlots, but you made your payments to all your lovers, and hired them to come to you from all around for your harlotry. ³⁴ You are the opposite of other women in your harlotry, because no one solicited you to be a harlot. In that you gave payment but no payment was given you, therefore you are the opposite.”  ³⁵ ‘Now then, O harlot, hear the word of the Lord! ³⁶ Thus says the Lord God: “Because your filthiness was poured out and your nakedness uncovered in your harlotry with your lovers, and with all your abominable idols, and because of the blood of your children which you gave to them, ³⁷ surely, therefore, I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved, and all those you hated; I will gather them from all around against you and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness. ³⁸ And I will judge you as women who break wedlock or shed blood are judged; I will bring blood upon you in fury and jealousy. ³⁹ I will also give you into their hand, and they shall throw down your shrines and break down your high places. They shall also strip you of your clothes, take your beautiful jewelry, and leave you naked and bare.

⁴⁰ “They shall also bring up an assembly against you, and they shall stone you with stones and thrust you through with their swords. ⁴¹ They shall burn your houses with fire, and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women; and I will make you cease playing the harlot, and you shall no longer hire lovers. ⁴² So I will lay to rest My fury toward you, and My jealousy shall depart from you. I will be quiet, and be angry no more. ⁴³ Because you did not remember the days of your youth, but agitated Me with all these things, surely I will also recompense your deeds on your own head,” says the Lord God. “And you shall not commit lewdness in addition to all your abominations.

 

What, Then, is the Idolatry We are Commanded to Flee

Now. we are ready to return to our starting passage and the command of God in 1 Cor 10:14:  flee from idolatry.

Let us first consider what we are not to flee regarding idolatry.  There is an extended discussion in the 1st Corinthian Epistle about the practice of meat being offered to idols in the pagan temple and then being made available for sale and consumption.  Corinth like the Roman Empire in which it was part was highly pagan with many gods and goddesses, including its ruling Caesar as a god himself.  Rome to its credit was highly tolerant of the religious practices of its vast empire as to what and how the people worshiped.  In Corinth likely as a practice to insure prosperity the highest and most valuable production of the land, the animal food stock, was offered to their gods as an act of homage and thanksgiving with the deepest wish that these gods would return the favor by continuing the prosperity of the land as to crops and the feed stock that thrived on such crops.

The gods of Corinth of course did not eat the mean offered, though their many priests and priestesses took their abundant share.  What remained was then sold by the livestock owner or by the temple administrators to the public in the agora, the central market of Corinth.  So anyone seeking to purchase meat, and likely almost any food item, knew that these had been offered in the nearby temple to the pagan gods in some kind of religious ceremony.

To Eat or Not to Eat?

Knowing that all such pagan practices are an anathema to God, what then should a Christian in Corinth do?  The text could have said:

• Don’t eat meat offered to idols
• Don’t eat anything (vegetables or meat) offered to idols
• Find and eat only meat or vegetables that has not been offered to idols
• Under all circumstances grow you own vegetables and eat them only, supplemented by a meat on special occasions if you can afford it
• Travel the countryside and find where bread has been made (whole grain, gluten free?) by growers who did not or could not get to temples to offer them to pagan gods in some religious ceremony.

Of course the text says none of these things.  Rather it says just the opposite: eat the meat even if its offered to idols as part of the pagan religion of that time and place.  Don’t ask, don’t tell; just eat.  The text makes clear why this is permitted:  the gods in the temple don’t exist, they have no being (so there is no there there).  As a result, what has been done there has no meaning to you as a Christian.  It is just like the situation of a farmer who always plants and harvests wearing his or her ‘lucky’ rabbits foot (how did that ever get started?).  We don’t ask about such practices because in the context of a commercial relationship it doesn’t matter to us what the farmer thought his prosperity was caused by.  Just sell us the bread, and we’ll eat it, gluten and all.  With butter too.

Now the text makes a very specific exception to the above freedom and that is the so-called weaker brother whose conscience is corrupted by knowingly eating meat offered to idols.  If a Corinthian Christian was eating with such a weak brother who created his person alarm of scruples regarding such meat, then as an act of kind love, it would be the right thing to not eat such meat, but only because one seeks not to wound a brother or sister in the Lord.  So the teaching here is about giving deference to someone not yet mature enough to understand the true situation, and doing so without condescension.

So we have the principle that eating food offered to idols is not practicing idolatry.  In other words mere affiliation with idolatrous practices (eating as affiliation) is not in itself practicing idolatry.  So if a pagan idol worshipper sells great muffins or hamburgers don’t hesitate to shop there even if there’s a symbol of the devil above the door.  One is just eating the food not worshipping the devil.  However, if one is with someone drawn to such false worship, it is better to eat somewhere else.

What Then is Idolatry?

The weaker brother example helps us to get to the core of the issue.  That is, it is not the eating of meat that’s the problem.  It is being drawn into the pagan practice of seeking to prosper my life by buying of– by my affections, attention, assets, whatever–those powerful gods that might otherwise harm my prosperity.  In order words, as a god myself, I seek to appease other gods particularly ones I perceive as more power, and do homage to them so he/they look favorably on me, and, so, reward me.

My doing any such thing is having other gods before God (violating Commandment 1) and coveting, indeed transgressively coveting the favor of other forces to gain what the One True God cannot completely be relied upon to provide me as part of His Creation (violating Commandment 10).

In short, idolatry is practicing religion, in the ordinary sense of the word “religion:” paying homage to God, god, gods, as a necessary duty for gaining the favor or sustaining the tolerance of such God, god, gods.

Recall the Book of Job.  In that story, under incredibly dramatic circumstances, Job falls from the greatest prosperity of health, stuff, family, and respected honor to to the lowest of lows.  His three friends (friends!) think they are helping the situation by exhorting him to appease God so all the adversity can be ended and prosperity begin anew.  Further, they observe that  a wheel of justice that has turned upon Job so that what he is experiencing can only be explained by his failure to pay the proper homage to God.  (The three friends have no specific accusation against Job as they have no evidence of anything wrong that Job has done or not done; they are only confident that it must have been something big).

The underlying belief that we get and lose favor from God based only upon our proper homage or improper sin is the story of the human, idolatrous heart since the beginning at the Fall in Eden.  We see ourselves as independent agents who can bring something of our own that is “good” in the sight of God and valued by Him that can act as our bargaining chip.  In effect, we seek to be a ‘god’ with certain powers and owning certain things that enables us to engage in dealmaking with the ‘big’ God (or many smaller ‘gods’ each of which is still bigger than us).  So life’s journey is about knowing who and how we need to pay off what we owe so we can control what happens to us, as we are indeed, as gods, entirely on our own.

What then is Fleeing?

In Corinth fleeing was not participating in the religious worship practices of that culture and, so, in the eyes of their culture, taking enormous risk that great harm will occur because of one’s affronting the gods.  It is better, that culture would have said, and says today, to be synchronistic, that is do both:  namely, go ahead and worship that new ‘god’ you have found but don’t neglect the others that others have found.  Just add it to the list.  The culture may also claim that our not doing so puts the entire society at risk because our ‘disobedience’ might cause one or more of the gods to exercise some judgment on the entire community; so, they might command us to ‘get in line’ with the society’s practices.

That was indeed the Roman practice and the temptation for those following the God of Abraham, namely the Lord Jesus Christ.  Will I be a follower of the the Unique and Only One, or go along and cover my bets by following whatever religious expressions I can fit into my schedule and bank account?

Did such temptation and choices end with Corinth, or the fall of Rome?  No, because the region industry preceded Rome and Corinth by millennia and it has likewise succeeded it by millennia, being alive and exceedingly powerful even today.  Let us now consider it.

The Religion Industry

We need to return to our word basket and the WordMart to establish a means of communication.  Religion is about paying the right homage to secure my gain and limit my pain.  The particular expression of “religion” is vastly varied and ever changing, but its particular expressions are not important to our purposes here.  Religion exists in whatever form and guises and calls on us for obeisance.  The system by which it does so can be understood as “The Religion Industry.”

We all know about the automobile industry, the telecommunications industry, the health care industry, and so forth.  They each have active participants, leaders and followers, suppliers and customers, and even adherents as in the sense of fans.  The Religion Industry is exactly the same kind of thing,  And it’s bigger.

How vast is The Religion Industry?  There is an excellent recent (2016) study done by a Georgetown University professor (Brian Grim) and his co-investigaor (Melissa Grim) that has been published in a referred research journal (Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion).  The published journal article is available here:

Some highlights of their findings, which considered only The Religion Industry in the United States are that it is massive in economic terms, likely more $1 Trillion in annual revenues, larger that the entire budgets of 180 countries in the world, and larger than the combined annual revenues of the 10 largest tech companies (Amazon, Apple, Google, etc.).  This is shocking because most of us only recognize small portions of the vast enterprise, but vast enterprise it is.  It has schools that funnel in its future employees and leaders.  It has advertising and incentive promotion activities to draw in adherents.  It has enormous political influence to protect its turf.  It has its ceremonies, doctrines, garments, writings, histories, practices.

Submerged in the data of The Religion Industry are those activities truly associated with following Christ, where there is no dealmaking going on, or possible to go on.  But we should not be fooled to think that much of The Religion Industry is in this category;  much of it may call itself “Christian” and use certain familiar lingo, but we should not be confused by apparent piety or language.

Where Would the Enemy Appear Today?

We tend to think that the Enemy of Christ, namely the Devil / Satan / Lucifer, is either dead and gone, or working on poor souls in some far off place, the category of “them” as distinct from “me.”  Such thinking is seriously mistaken.

The Enemy is defeated, and eternally so, but he ain’t dead (yet).  Consider this passage (again NKJV, emphasis mine):

1 Peter 5:  ¹ The elders who are among you I exhort, I who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed: ² Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly; ³ nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock; ⁴ and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.  ⁵ Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” ⁶ Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, ⁷ casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.

⁸ Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

Where then do we need to be sober-vigilant on behalf of our very Spiritual lives?  Answer:  in The Religion Industry:

2 Cor. 11 (Paul, addressing the Corinthian church, NKJV)
⁷ Did I commit sin in humbling myself that you might be exalted, because I preached the gospel of God to you free of charge? ⁸ I robbed other churches, taking wages from them to minister to you. ⁹ And when I was present with you, and in need, I was a burden to no one, for what I lacked the brethren who came from Macedonia supplied. And in everything I kept myself from being burdensome to you, and so I will keep myself. ¹⁰ As the truth of Christ is in me, no one shall stop me from this boasting in the regions of Achaia [an important region of Greece, including Corinth]. ¹¹ Why? Because I do not love you? God knows!

¹² But what I do, I will also continue to do, that I may cut off the opportunity from those who desire an opportunity to be regarded just as we are in the things of which they boast. ¹³ For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. ¹⁴ And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. ¹⁵ Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.

The Great Harlot of Revelation?

Consider another passage, one that has been subjected to much speculation, namely the symbolic language references a “Great Harlot” (bluntly:  whore, prostitute) as given in the Book of Revelation, including the most important reference in Chapter 17.    This chapter which is near the climax of the Book and the Bible itself has much worth of careful study, which itself requires careful consideration of the preceding 16 chapters.  For our purposes here we  need only consider the references to the Great Harlot.  The entire 17th  is given below (NKJV, emphasis mine).

Revelation 17 ¹ Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, ² with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication.”

³ So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. ⁴ The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, [all such references to her wealth and importance] having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. ⁵ And on her forehead a name was written:

MYSTERY, BABYLON
THE GREAT,
THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS
OF THE EARTH.

⁶ I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement.

⁷ But the angel said to me, “Why did you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns. ⁸ The beast that you saw was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition. And those who dwell on the earth will marvel, whose names are not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.

⁹ “Here is the mind which has wisdom: The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. ¹⁰ There are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must continue a short time. ¹¹ The beast that was, and is not, is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven, and is going to perdition.

¹² “The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast. ¹³ These are of one mind, and they will give their power and authority to the beast. ¹⁴ These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful.”

¹⁵ Then he said to me, “The waters which you saw, where the harlot sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues. ¹⁶ And the ten horns which you saw on the beast, these will hate the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire. ¹⁷ For God has put it into their hearts to fulfill His purpose, to be of one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled. ¹⁸ And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth.”

Again, we need reminding that this passage occurring late in the incredible book of Revelation is worthy of an extensive, careful study, which is beyond our scope here.  However, what is relevant is at the very end of this age of ages there is a particular judgment to be executed by The Lord of Lords, King of Kings upon The Great Harlot, which Harlot is rich and powerful beyond imagination and an avowed enemy of the true followers of God.

Much has been made about exactly who is represented (signified) by “The Great Harlot.”  My view here is simply that it includes, and may only mean, The Religion Industry as distinct from the true sheep of the True Shepherd.

Tower of Babel and Babylon

There is one telling phrase in the above, the heading phrase “Mystery Babylon.”  Again much has been made of this phrase that is beyond our study here.  But we can discern something important and relevant by going back to the very root of Babylon, namely Babel, which is built on the idea of confusion.  And confusion, and self-exaltation is what was going on at Babel (Babylon) of old.  Consider this:

Genesis 10: ⁸ Cush begot Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth. ⁹ He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.” ¹⁰ And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. ¹¹ From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, ¹² and Resen between Nineveh and Calah (that is the principal city).

 

Genesis 11 ¹ Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. ² And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar [this is area in which Babylon was constructed], and they dwelt there. ³ Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. ⁴ And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

⁵ But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. ⁶ And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. ⁷ Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” ⁸ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. ⁹ Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Note in Gen. 11:4 the aspiration of this line of people was to (1) make a name for themselves, (2) to do so by making a great physical creation attesting to their own accomplishments, (3) and be visibly prominent and thereby attracting the awe of everyone surrounding them.  All this was in direct opposition to God’s command to scatter and fill the earth, a purpose which God ultimately accomplished by the judgment of languages.

Thus that initial spirit of rebellion and self-seeking was not extinguished but spread everywhere though its construction of self-glory in physical terms and was delayed for a time.  That spirit and impulse never left and has returned and dominated in every culture and in every way ever since, it is the essence of The Religion Industry.

Flee from Idolatry

Now let us conclude by again returning to the command of 1 Cor. 10:14:  flee from idolatry.

As we have discussed such fleeing does not extended to the mere association of vestiges and offerings of the idolatrous pagan practices as there would be no place on the earth that is without such.

Rather, fleeing idolatry is running from the almost magnetic pull of The Religion Industry, which provides (it claims) the promise of the harbor, sanctuary, comfort, from the burdens of this life and perhaps even the sorrows of the next one.  All that is required is to pay homage (including money) to that promise of self-deliverance by dealmaking.

Very few of us are tempted to worship some physical object like a carved stick or sculpture.  However, we are all tempted, even inclined by our fallen nature, to manage our own prosperity independently of God, often under some bizarre theory of combining systems that are inherenetly antithetical.  (In any form, any instantiation of The Religion Industry is antithetical to God within that specific meaning that religion is about me finding and appeasing God).

Yet such fleeing does not mean, cannot mean, the avoidance of any association or community with other true God followers.  Scripture is clear that such gathering with true fellow travelers in this life is both necessary and good (or should be) as we have numerous NT examples in the Epistles to churches as gatherings of called out ones.  (None of these Epistles say you should disband such gatherings and stay home).

But not all such gatherings using the name of Christ are directed toward the pursuit of God.  Consider the very strong language the Apostle Paul uses in the Galatian Epistle against the corruption that has entered there by the actions of the Judaizers who were seeking some form of synchronism between Moses as the embodiment of the OT Law with Christ as the ‘new,’ addition to Moses in the NT Gospel.  The Law and the Gospel do go together in a certain sense, but it is the sense that we recognize that The Law leads only to our condemnation and The Gospel leads only to our redemption by the finished work of Christ.

Gal. 3  ¹ O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? ² This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? ³ Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? ⁴ Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?

⁵ Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?— ⁶ just as Abraham “believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” ⁷ Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. ⁸ And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, “In you all the nations shall be blessed.”^{[d] 9} So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.

¹⁰ For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.” ¹¹ But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for “the just shall live by faith.” ¹² Yet the law is not of faith, but “the man who does them shall live by them.”

¹³ Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), ¹⁴ that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

 

Gal. 4  ²¹ Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? ²² For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. ²³ But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, ²⁴ which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar— ²⁵ for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children— ²⁶ but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. ²⁷ For it is written:

“Rejoice, O barren,
You who do not bear!
Break forth and shout,
You who are not in labor!
For the desolate has many more children
Than she who has a husband.”

²⁸ Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. ²⁹ But, as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now. ³⁰ Nevertheless what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.” ³¹ So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman but of the free.

 

Gal. 6  ¹¹ See with what large letters I have written to you with my own hand! ¹² As many as desire to make a good showing in the flesh, these would compel you to be circumcised, only that they may not suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. ¹³ For not even those who are circumcised keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. ¹⁴ But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. ¹⁵ For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation.