Quotes About Idolatry

The sum is, that the worship of God must be spiritual, in order that it may correspond with His nature. For although Moses only speaks of idolatry, yet there is no doubt but that by synecdoche, as in all the rest of the law, he condemns all fictitious services which men in their ingenuity have invented.

The Must be worthless by our estimation or keep us enslaved by an intemperate love of it.

When Paul reminds the Galatians of what they were before they came to the knowledge of Gods he says that they "did service unto them which by nature are no gods," (Gal. 4:8). Because he does not say ??????, was their superstition excusable? This superstition, to which he gives the name of ?????, he condemns as much as if he had given it the name of ??????.

The Lord, however, not only forbids any image of himself to be erected by a statuary, but to be formed by any artist whatever, because every such image is sinful and insulting to his majesty.

Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.

Those who set up a fictitious worship, merely worship and adore their own delirious fancies; indeed, they would never dare so to trifle with God, had they not previously fashioned him after their own childish conceits.

For invented gods invariably disappoint those who worship them.

And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. —Deuteronomy 12:3

If anything becomes more fundamental than God to your happiness, meaning of life, and identity then it is an idol.

If you love things, you will strive to objectify yourself in terms of money, power, pleasure, and prestige—idols all. You will worship yourself—or, at least, a two-dimensional cutout of yourself.

If you view life as a gold rush, you're going to end up worshiping a golden calf. And when you call for help, and that golden calf can't respond, you go under.

Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.

Whoever extolls him as a God of love, does not think highly enough of love itself.

You revere me: but what if your reverence should some day collapse? Be careful lest a statue fall and kill you!

Ye venerate me; but what if your veneration should some day collapse? Take heed lest a statue crush you!

Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.

If you do not worship God, you worship something, and nine times out of ten it will be yourself. You have a duty to worship God, not because He will be imperfect and unhappy if you do not, but because you will be imperfect and unhappy.

A man who makes himself a god must hide; otherwise his false divinity will be unmasked.

Woe to us if we get our satisfaction from the food in the kitchen and the TV in the den and the sex in the bedroom with an occasional tribute to the cement blocks in the basement!

And yet another word for infidelity in the biblical tradition is idolatry, namely, to be faithful to something other than God.

We all know that a book is not really a person. It isn't a human being. But if you are a lover of books as books – as objects, that is – and ignore the human element in them – that is, their voices – you will be committing an error of the soul, because you will be an idolator, or else a fetishist.

Don't interfere with false gods, you'll get the gold paint all over your hands.

Be thankful for the thorns and thistles, which keep you from being in love with this world, and becoming an idolater.

Show me where a man spends his time & money, and I'll show you his god.