Idolatry

We are studying the book of Romans in my Monday night bible study. We just (re-)started a couple of weeks ago, so we are still in Romans 1. Here are verses 21-24:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

We talked about the things we “worship” in place of God. The teacher shared something he read years ago in a commentary.

The way we treat people can reveal something about our idols. This might manifest itself in a habit of only forming and maintaining relationships that advance our goals or highlight things about ourselves that we like. Or it might be that we aren’t friends with people who aren’t educated, Republican, and Christian, because we think those qualities trump our responsibility to love everyone.

This might seem to imply that we aren’t permitted to make any distinctions at all, and that we sin if we don’t treat everyone identically. That’s not so. There are legitimate reasons for discrimination. It just happens that most of ours aren’t. I think it’s a probe, an interesting and useful way of examining ourselves.