It is a practice condemned in both the Old and New Testaments, and a whole city was once destroyed largely because of it. But Jesus himself never said it was sinful. In fact, as far as we can tell, he never said a word about it. Why is that?
I am referring to the sin of idolatry, the worship of images made from wood, stone, metal or clay. There are hundreds of passages in the Old Testament condemning idolatry - most notably, perhaps, Exodus 20:4-5, the 2nd of the 10 commandments: “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.” But despite warnings from the prophets, Israel and Judah succumbed to idol worship repeatedly over hundreds of years until judgment fell in 586 BC when Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed Jerusalem. For the connection between idolatry and Jerusalem’s fall see Ezekiel 5:8-9: “Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: ‘I myself am against you, Jerusalem, and I will inflict punishment on you in the sight of the nations. Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again,’” and 2 Chronicles 24:18: “They abandoned the temple of the LORD, the God of their ancestors, and worshiped Asherah poles and idols. Because of their guilt, God’s anger came on Judah and Jerusalem.”
More than 600 years later, the apostles of Jesus likewise condemned idolatry and warned Christians to flee from it. See for example 1 Corinthians 10:14: “Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry”; 1 Peter 4:3: “For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry”; 1 John 5:21: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”
But Jesus, insofar as we have record of his teachings, avoided the topic of idol worship. He did so even when the discussion provided a natural spot to mention it. In Mark 7:21-22, for example, Jesus listed a dozen sins in rapid succession – “sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly” – but left out idolatry. And in the encounter with the rich young ruler, Jesus said, “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother’” (Mark 10:19). Again, idolatry could have been mentioned but wasn’t. By way of contrast, when St. Paul enumerated vices that keep people out of God’s kingdom, he put idol worship back on the list (see 1 Corinthians 6:9; Galatians 5:19).
So why the silence on Jesus’ part? Any answer is speculative of course because no Bible text reads, “Here’s why Jesus never mentioned idolatry.” But it seems that a satisfying answer lies pretty close at hand. Jesus didn’t condemn idolatry because he didn’t have to. His fellow Jews had already taken care of it, and by the first century AD had expunged idolatry from their midst with righteous zeal. After the return from exile in Babylon some 500 years earlier you don’t see idolatry among the Jews. The Babylonian Captivity seems to have cured them of it - at least in terms of its visible and publically tolerated manifestations. Gentiles worshiped idols, but Jews didn’t. And in the course of his public ministry, Jesus dealt almost exclusively with Jews. His Gentile encounters can be numbered on one hand.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that the Jews of Jesus’ day never committed spiritual idolatry of the sort that St. Paul condemned when he equated idolatry with greed in Ephesians 5:5 and Colossians 3:5. Of course they were greedy, and so are we: we all commit that kind of idolatry and need God’s grace to overcome it. I’m referring only to graven images that people consciously worship. Nor am I saying that there did not exist, in Jesus’ day, Jews with idolatrous orientations who longed to visit pagan temples or who sneaked surreptitious prayers to statues they kept hidden under their floorboards. It would be impossible to say that the sin was nonexistent. What I am saying is that the cultural climate among the Jews was so hostile to idolatry that the practice could not easily be found among them. If Yitzhak nudged Rueben and whispered, “Psst! Rueben! Want to join me tonight as I sacrifice a chicken to my image of Molech?” then Rueben would have outed him on the spot and gathered a crowd of zealots to stone him to death. It wasn’t safe to worship idols among the Jews.
In his culture it would have been pointless for Jesus to condemn idolatry. And not just pointless, but, I would suggest, cowardly. A peculiar temptation of moral crusaders is to rage against those sins that the people in their audience are already raging against. We, the corrupt audience, love to hear other people’s sins condemned, and are very pleased when our own sins go unchallenged. If Jesus had condemned idolatry, who in his audience could possibly have objected? Who would have been convicted of sin and moved to repent? Everyone would have nodded and said, “Amen.” A Jewish coalition as diverse as publicans, prostitutes, priests and Pharisees would have praised Jesus for ripping those Gentile polytheistic perverts. Even Herod Antipas, butcher of prophets, would have applauded such a sermon and put up a link to it on CountenanceScroll.
But Jesus didn’t go after safe sins. He targeted sins that people in his audience actually committed. This, coupled with his outrageous claims to divinity, tended to divide them into two camps: those who fell at his feet in humble repentance and those who said, “Kill the bastard.”
Years later, when the gospel of Jesus went out into the Gentile world, idolatry again became a live issue. The apostles, not being fools, did not scratch their heads and say, “Well, Jesus never mentioned idolatry, so maybe it’s not so bad after all.” They attacked idolatry just like their Old Testament counterparts. In Acts 17:16 St. Paul was deeply grieved to find the city of Athens full of idols, and went on to preach an anti-idol message of the sort that would have been superfluous coming from the mouth of Jesus. Writing to another Idol-filled city, Rome, St. Paul again excoriated the practice in unambiguous terms (see Romans 1:21-25).
Two conclusions follow.
First, we who walk in the footsteps of Jesus and claim to speak in his name must take care lest we find ourselves condemning only those sins that our culture is already attacking. That is a good strategy for becoming popular, but it dishonors God. Question your call as a minister if the only sins against which you raise a prophetic voice are the obvious, egregious things that everybody already hates and that no rational person defends – things like sex trafficking, racism, or being Donald Trump. And may God have mercy on your soul if you go silent about some evil practice right at the time that society has deemed it good. Cowards have no place in Christian proclamation.
Second, see for what it is the argument that seeks to justify some behavior on the ground that Jesus never mentioned it. That argument is as dumb as a box of socks.
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