Confronting Cultural Idols Pt. 2

1 John is possibly the last or close to the last book of the Bible written.

It was probably written somewhere between 90 and 95 AD.

And this very well may have been John's final piece of writing to his church before he passed away.

And what we're going to do is look at the final verses of this book.

And what we see is pretty interesting.

John leaves us, he leaves his church with this one simple command.

Little ones, keep yourselves from idols.

Now an idol is a false god.

It's anything in our lives that takes the place of God.

And last week we spent our entire time talking about all of the ways that idols play a role in who we are and how we live.

We talked about the way that idols shape the culture around us.

And we said that all human beings, even non-religious people, have something at the center of their lives that they cannot live without.

Some ultimate thing.

And that's essentially what an idol is.

And the same is true of cultures.

All cultures have idols at their center.

But this passage is different.

Because in this passage, John is speaking to Christians.

He's talking to his people.

And he is warning Christians about the danger of idols.

And that's interesting because these are people who, by definition, we would expect should have rejected the worship of idols and who, by definition, were worshipers of God in Jesus Christ.

But the truth is, the biggest threat to the spiritual vitality of the church, the biggest deterrent to non-Christians coming into the church who may be open to the truth of the gospel,

And the biggest reason why your faith may feel dead or inert or empty, the biggest reason for all of these things is that idols in the surrounding culture are always seeping into the church like water seeps into a basement.

And when that happens, they begin to cause all kinds of rot and mold and spiritual decay.

Idols are always seeping into the church.

And so as a part of our series on gospel and cultural renewal, we're going to spend our time this week focusing on idolatry in the church.

Because before Christians have any hope of confronting idols in the culture, we first have to confront the idols in our own house, in the church.

And so that's why we're looking at 1 John 5, verses 19 through 21.

1 John 5:19–21

This passage shows us two things.

It shows us why idols are dangerous, and it shows us how to guard against them, which is John's command.

So let's pray, and then we'll open God's word together.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for your ability to minister to us through your word.

And we pray that you would do that in the power of your Holy Spirit for the glory and the sake of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

So why are idols so dangerous?

You know, growing up, my family watched a lot of scary movies.

And in a typical scary movie, even if it's not clear at the beginning of the movie, by the end of the film, evil has been clearly identified.

Evil is always some other thing.

It's a monster, or it's an alien, or it's a maniacal killer trying to kill the protagonist.

And the protagonist in some movies is able to overcome that evil, or at least to escape that evil.

And so I think that most people prefer to think of evil this way.

Evil is something other.

It's something different.

And so when it comes to the greatest acts of evil ever committed in real life, such as the Holocaust, I think most people assume that the people behind an evil such as the Holocaust must be monsters.

They must be other.

They must be maniacal killers.

And that's precisely what Hannah Arendt thought.

She's the great political philosopher who went to report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, who's the, or many people referred to him as the architect of the Holocaust.

And if you think about somebody like that, the architect of the Holocaust, you would expect, and this is what she expected, she expected to see a monster.

She expected to meet a creature of pure evil.

And yet Eichmann completely defied her expectations.

Eichmann, it turns out, was no monster.

He was no maniacal killer.

Eichmann was, in fact, a boring bureaucrat.

She was shocked to realize that he was not motivated by some deep-seated extreme anti-Semitism or malevolence.

He was motivated by the same things that tend to motivate most of us.

He was motivated by careerism.

He was motivated by conformity.

He was motivated by obedience to his superiors.

He was motivated by the desire to be thought well of and respected by people whom he respected.

And what we see in Eichmann and what Hannah Arendt learned through this encounter is something incredibly important.

And that is that most of the time, evil doesn't look like a monster.

Evil can simply be a person living an unexamined life, going about their daily tasks, never really pausing to consider the meaning or the consequences of their actions.

As Hannah Arendt said in her last book before she passed away,

the sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be good or evil.

Now, this is not to say that there is no such thing as spiritual evil.

John, in verse 19, says the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

But here's the thing that I want you to notice about this.

According to John, there's no struggle.

There's no epic battle between good versus evil, which is what so many movies depict and what so many human beings assume is true of the world.

There is no epic battle between good and evil.

He says the world lies in the power of the evil one.

The world is sedate.

The world is spiritually asleep.

The world is inert.

The world is slumbering peacefully in the arms of the evil one.

And you ask, well, how could this be true?

And the answer is idols.

The anesthetizing power of idols.

When we allow something in our lives other than God to become ultimate, whether it's wealth or career or power or something else,

we may not know it.

But we are actually giving our allegiance to the evil one.

This is why in other places in Paul's writing, when he writes about idols, he says,

On one level, they're deaf and dumb and mute.

They're nothing.

But on another level, they have a spiritual evil behind them.

When we give our allegiance to idols, we are in league with demons.

And so there is a true spiritual evil.

This is what John refers to as the evil one.

But what we need to understand is it operates behind the scenes.

It's not like horror movies.

It operates through idols.

And so you can live your entire life with good intentions.

You can try to do right.

You can have worthy goals that you're pursuing.

And yet at the same time, you can be spiritually asleep in the arms of evil.

And this is the crucial point we need to see.

There is no such thing as neutrality when it comes to idols.

When it comes to idols, we only have two options.

Active resistance or passive surrender.

If we are not actively resisting, actively fighting against idols,

that means that we have already passively surrendered.

In other words, idolatry is our default factory setting.

And so what John is saying is that Christians are not immune to this danger.

When you give your life to Jesus in faith and when you become a follower of Jesus,

it sets you free from sin.

It sets you free from the penalty of sin.

It sets you free from death.

It restores your relationship with God.

But it does not make you immune to the anesthetizing power of idols.

Gerhard Cattel was one of the greatest biblical scholars in his day.

He was an expert in Judaism.

And any serious theological library you go to,

you will find a copy of his theological dictionary of the New Testament.

And yet at the same time, this biblical expert was also an enthusiastic member of the Nazi party.

And at one point, he was finally arrested for war crimes.

And you ask, well, how could this possibly be?

Well, just like Adolf Eichmann, Cattel, along with many other Christians, was seduced.

He was anesthetized.

He was sedated by the cultural idols of the day.

And Scott McKnight writes, for Christians, the temptation in 1930s Germany was to become a German Christian,

a form of Lutheranism that was engulfed by race and nation and blood and land.

And this is the reason that idols are so dangerous, the reason they're so insidious,

and in particular, cultural idols.

Because we don't even know that they're there.

We don't even know that they're there.

They're simply the water that we swim in.

In 1930s Germany, the cultural water was saturated with the idols of nationalism and ethnocentrism.

And that idol-saturated water seeped into the church like water into the basement of a house.

And so many Christians, people like Cattel, were seduced by them without even knowing it was happening.

And so here we have John's final warning in its context to the church.

Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

In other words, guard vigilantly against idols seeping in to the church.

Now, how do we do this?

How do we go about guarding against idols in the church?

Well, it takes a couple of things.

Number one, in order to guard against idols, we have to be able to identify cultural idols.

And the only way to see idols, which are essentially false gods, for what they are,

is by knowing and seeing clearly the true God.

And when you know the true God, then you have a basis of comparison,

and you're able to see false gods for what they really are.

And so John says in verse 20, we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding

so that we may know Him who is true.

And then a little bit later, he refers to God as the true God.

So Jesus came to give us understanding.

Jesus came to free us from idols.

Jesus came so that we could know the true God and thereby identify the false gods in the world.

And so then the question comes, how do we know Jesus?

And this points us back to the opening of 1 John.

The first thing John says in his letter is this.

He says, starting in verse 3,

So here John is talking about the testimony of the apostles.

He's talking about the scriptures.

He's talking about that which we have seen and heard we now proclaim.

So in other words, the only way to see false gods is to know the true God.

The only way to know the true God is through Jesus Christ.

And the only way to know Jesus Christ is through the testimony of the apostles,

the scriptures that were written by John and the other apostles

about what they had seen and heard firsthand.

So the point is this.

In order to guard against idols seeping into our spiritual life, seeping into the church,

we have to be able to identify them.

And that means that our relationship with scripture has to be profound.

Scripture has to be so deeply in us that it becomes the lens through which we view culture

and we view it critically.

So scripture becomes the critical lens through which we view the culture around us.

It's almost as though when you use scripture this way, if you'll forgive the metaphor,

it's almost as though you're putting on a pair of spiritual augmented reality glasses

that allow you to see things that you would otherwise not be able to see,

but it allows you to see things as they really are.

And this is very important because most of the time Christians are tempted to do the exact opposite of this.

Instead of viewing culture through the lens of scripture,

we're very tempted to view scripture through the lens of culture.

And so there are always and have always been churches and denominations

that make the decision to reinterpret or altogether ignore certain parts of scripture.

And they're tempted to revise their theology to fit better

with the most popular social and cultural views of the day.

That's always a temptation.

But as we said last week, when you do that,

you open the floodgates of idolatry.

You open the floodgates and idols pour into the church.

And this is why, as we said a couple of weeks ago,

the churches and denominations and Christian groups

that have revised and diluted their theology are all either dead or dying.

And so we have to resist this temptation.

Scripture must be the lens through which we view culture,

not the other way around.

To return to the German illustration for just a moment,

unlike Cattell, there were Christians who did resist the Nazis.

There were people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth.

And you ask, well, what made the difference?

What was the difference between these people?

All of these men studied scripture

and had a deep theological understanding of scripture.

But for Cattell, his study remained largely academic.

It never penetrated his heart.

The culture essentially shaped his approach

and interpretation of scripture

rather than the scripture shaping his approach to culture.

And so he remained more or less blind

to the way that idols had seeped into his spiritual life.

Contrast that with Bonhoeffer and Barth,

who were clearly shaped by scripture.

They led in the drafting of the Barman Declaration,

which used scripture to justify opposition to Nazism.

It provided the doctrinal foundation for Christians to oppose the Nazis.

And here's what it says in that declaration.

Jesus Christ, as he has attested for us in holy scripture,

is the one word of God which we have to hear

and which we have to obey in life and in death.

So they're clearly looking at their culture through the lens of scripture.

Their sense of allegiance is crystal clear.

Our allegiance is to Jesus in the scriptures,

not to the culture around us.

And that's what made it possible for them to identify

the way these idols of nationalism and ethnocentrism

were creeping into the church and to take a stand against it.

Right, so the first thing in order to guard against idols

is we need a way to see idols.

And that means scripture has to become the lens

through which we view the culture around us.

The second thing we need is a lifestyle of ongoing repentance.

It's not enough to see the idols in our midst

if we're not willing to repent,

if we're not willing to leave those idols

and go back to our first love, Jesus Christ.

So even as Christians work to bring renewal,

we're also always seeking to be renewed ourselves

again and again and again.

The church is always needing to repent,

always needing to come back to Christ

again and again and again in every age.

And this means our posture toward culture

is not one of finger-wagging

where we're sanctimoniously speaking down to the secular world.

Rather, we are like fellow inmates

who have just had the fortune of being set free

from our idols for this moment.

And we are desperately trying to set

as many other people free as we possibly can

in the time that we have.

So our posture toward culture

is very much one of humility.

It's very much one of a shared struggle

against the true common enemy,

which is the evil one and the idolatry

through which he works.

And it can be very hard to admit

when we look at the past

that Christians have been complicit

in something like Nazi Germany

or with slavery

or Jim Crow

or any of the other myriad historical examples

that we could name.

But one of our greatest strengths

as the church

lies in our capacity for self-correction.

That is one of our greatest strengths

throughout history

is our capacity for self-correction.

And the more often we repent of idols

in the church,

the more we grow in our faith,

the more effective we become

in the ministry that Jesus calls to.

As one of my friends

who's a pastor likes to say,

Christians should be trigger happy

when it comes to repentance.

We should be eager to repent

as often as we can.

And so as we look at the church today

in our society,

as we look at ourselves,

the question arises,

what do we need to repent of?

What are some of the idols

that we see creeping

into the basement of the church?

And, you know,

on a national level,

as we look at the church

in the U.S.

across the last half a century,

I think for many,

there's a need to repent

of the idols of nationalism and power.

Now, you know,

I want to make it clear

that nationalism

is not the same thing

as patriotism.

And I actually think

that patriotism

is a very good thing.

And I think that we,

it's right to be patriotic

and to love our country

and to be for our country.

But when Christians

begin to merge

their Christian identity

with their American identity,

when we begin to forget

that our primary citizenship

is in the kingdom of God

and not in the United States

of America,

when we begin to forget

that we are sojourners

and exiles

and that this world

is not ultimately our home

until Jesus Christ renews it,

that's when it starts

to become idolatry.

Likewise,

when we think about power,

I think that it's clear

that evangelicals

in particular

have sacrificed

a lot of integrity

in the quest

for political

and cultural power.

And what you see

are many Christians

who are seeking power

so that they can exert

greater and greater control

over the culture.

Instead of using the power

and the privilege

that we have

to build a more just society

for everyone,

especially the people

with whom we may disagree.

So these are issues

in the church at large

for sure.

But I also want to say this.

I don't actually think

that those are the biggest challenges

in our church.

I think our church

is maybe a little different.

Most of the people

in our community

would probably not refer

to themselves

as evangelical.

I know for a fact

from talking to people

that some people

come to our church

because they're trying

to figure out

how to be a Christian

without having

that demographic label

of evangelical on them.

Now, regardless

of what you think

about that

or how you feel about it,

it's simply something

that is true

of our community.

But what we need

to realize is

that with that separation,

there can often be

a sense of smugness,

a smug feeling

of superiority

over those other Christians.

And I think

that our idols

probably more fall

into the categories

of respectability

and security.

We like to think

of ourselves

as the educated Christians,

the urban Christians,

the culturally savvy

and sophisticated Christians,

the kind of Christians

who might go

to a racial justice rally

but wouldn't be caught dead

at a pro-life rally.

And what's interesting

about this

is that theologically

both issues

matter a great deal

and Christians

should care about

both issues

for the same reason

because of our

theology of personhood.

But the truth is

is that one cause

is far more

socially acceptable

in a place

like Washington, D.C.

than the other cause is.

So for many

in our community

our worst fear

is being accused

of being hateful

or intolerant

or being called a bigot.

And so I think

that for many

in our community

the biggest temptation

is to simply fly

under the radar.

It's to blend in

as much as possible.

It's to be theological

conservatives

in liberal clothing.

To remain

perpetually uncertain

about any doctrine

that might be found

offensive by others.

And essentially

to minimize the chances

that we might lose

people's respect

because of our faith.

You know,

these are certainly

some of my biggest temptations

if I'm totally honest

about my heart.

And so what we really

need to see

and I think that

what John's warning

says to us

is that when we do this

that we're actually

no different

than someone like

Gerhard Cattel.

Right?

We're allowing

the culture

to dictate

our faith.

We're allowing

the culture

to shape

our relationship

with Jesus

and the scriptures

rather than

the other way around.

And so

to the extent

to which we

are doing these things

we need to repent.

We need to return

to our first love.

We need to let go

of our idols

whether they be

nationalism

or power

or respectability

or security

or any of the other things

that they might be.

And the good news is

we can repent

as often

as it takes

because our identity

in Christ

is secure.

Jesus is not waiting

for us to get it right

before he embraces us.

He has embraced us

and it is in his arms

that we learn

how to live

set free

from the arms

of the evil one.

He has awakened us

spiritually

and the call now

is to stay awake

to stay vigilant

to stay watchful

until Jesus comes again.

As John says

in verse 19

we know

that we're from God.

We know that.

That is the one thing

that is true

and unshakably true.

Right?

So even when we try

to let go of God

and even when we're tempted

to run

and to take hold

of idols

the good news

of the gospel

is this

is that God

is the kind of God

who will never

let us go.

Let's pray.

Lord we thank you

and we know

that the core of this

the core message

is that we have

no hope apart from you.

And not only

do we need you

to set us free

from idols

and to restore us

to relationship

with you

in Jesus Christ.

But we need

the spiritual power

of the Holy Spirit

to keep us free

from idols

to help us

be vigilant

in our struggle

against the evil one

and the anesthetizing power

of the idols

that surround us

in our culture.

That we might be salt

and light

in the ways

that you have called us

to be Lord

and ultimately

that we might speak

and live in ways

that point

not to ourselves

but to your glory

Lord.

And it's in the name

of that glory

and of your son

Jesus Christ

that we pray.

Amen.