A Quote by Aiden Wilson Tozer
The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.
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The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him. The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him.
Orthodoxy is idolatry if it means holding the 'correct opinions about God' - 'fundamentalism' is the most extreme and salient example of such idolatry - but not if it means holding faith in the right way, that is, not holding it at all but being held by God, in love and service. Theology is idolatry if it means what we say about God instead of letting ourselves be addressed by what God has to say to us. Faith is idolatrous if it is rigidly self-certain but not if it is softened in the waters of 'doubt.
Idolatry is not simply worshiping a stone image; idolatry is any concept of God that reduces Him to less than who He really is.
You need to keep reminding yourself that you are a Divine piece of God. Feeling as if you're unworthy of God's abundance is the same as denying your spiritual essence.
The Bible portrays God as entering into covenants with people which, when broken, causes him grief and sorrow. The biblical prophet Hosea and God's using him as an illustration of how much Israel's idolatry costs God emotionally points to God's vulnerability. But also the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ who, even as God the Son, suffered for our sins, points to God's vulnerability.
When your thoughts and opinions become intellectual gods in rebellion against the Word of God, you are in idolatry.
That was always what I felt was the beauty of Rock 'n' Roll, it was entertainment and showbiz yet it had the idea of the voice of the people, it had an essence to it which was socially motivated. Not that I want to change to world, you know? But it was sort of relevant to real life, it involved the real essence of poetry or the real essence of fine art. But it was also entertainment. That was the real vitality.
Knowledge about God is of two kinds, direct and indirect. Indirectly we can read scriptures, listen to sermons, consult authorities, and from these sources build a reasonable case that God exists. But such a God transmits no love to Earth. Therefore nothing substitutes for gyana, which is direct knowledge of the divine. Instead of having thoughts about God, you share God's own thoughts. Her thoughts can only be about Herself.
Again, Rayford slid to the ground, raising his arms. "My Lord and my God, I am so unworthy." "And you, Rayford, who once were alienated and an enemy in your mind by wicked works, yet now I have reconciled the body of My flesh through death to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in God's sight." "Unworthy! Unworthy!" Rayford cried. "Justified by faith," Jesus said, "Justified.
I won't put my ignorance on an altar and call it God. It feels like idolatry, like the worst kind of idolatry.
Refusing to accept God's love because we're unworthy - of course we're unworthy! - is another golden calf.
We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.
In fact, entertainment has taken the place of celebration in the present world. But entertainment is quite different from celebration; entertainment and celebration are never the same. In celebration you are a participant; in entertainment you are only a spectator. In entertainment you watch others playing for you. So while celebration is active, entertainment is passive. In celebration you dance, while in entertainment you watch someone dancing, for which you pay him.
Given the sin of impiety through which they [the Romans] sinned against the divine nature [by idolatry], the punishment that led them to sin against their own nature followed.... I say, therefore, that since they changed into lies [by idolatry] the truth about God, He brought them to ignominious passions, that is, to sins against nature; not that God led them to evil, but only that he abandoned them to evil.
Revenge, lust, ambition, pride, and self-will are too often exalted as the gods of man's idolatry; while holiness, peace, contentment, and humility are viewed as unworthy of a serious thought.
Enoch predicted that "the demons and the spirits of the angelic apostates would turn into idolatry all the elements, all the adornment of the universe, and all things contained in the heaven, the sea, and the earth, that they might be consecrated as God in opposition to God." All things, therefore, does human error worship, except the Founder of all himself. The images of those things are idols; the consecration of the images is idolatry.
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