Quotes About Idolatry

Romans 1:25 indicates that idolatry is often the result of taking good things in creation and making them ultimate things. They usurp the supreme place that only the Creator should have in our hearts and lives.

Human beings are always tempted to love and serve things in the creation rather than the Creator. So often, we think of false worship and idolatry only in terms of things that are obviously sinful. While this can be the case, Romans 1:25 indicates that idolatry is often the result of taking good things in creation and making them ultimate things.

Our hearts are so often captivated by paltry God-replacements that matter to us more than the true God. When we start to see this, it is the beginning of change and the pathway to freedom.

We are worshipers who enter into relationship with the person or thing we think will give us life.

There's only one thing people love more than their heroes, and that's stomping them into the ground.

Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?' asked Lord Henry. 'Because without intending it, I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing Harry - too much of myself!

The reflection, the verisimilitude, of life that shines in the fleshly cells from the soul source is the only cause of man's attachment to his body; obviously he would not pay solicitous homage to a clod of clay. A human being falsely identifies himself with his physical form because the life currents from the soul are breath-conveyed into the flesh with such intense power that man mistakes the effect for a cause, and idolatrously imagines the body to have life of its own.

Westerners think of Hindus as idol worshipers, but what is it they themselves worship? Money and power – aren't those idols? There is nothing wrong or contrary to spiritual truth in using images as reminders of high principles. How many people are able to visualize such abstractions as love or wisdom? The Hindu images are not idols. They are symbols of different aspects of God. Their very variety shows a recognition of the fact that God is infinite. —Paramhansa Yogananda

"Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God."

All the best gods are made of stone and say nothing.

And they know neither sect nor idolatry, with the exception that all believe that the source of all power and goodness is in the sky, and they believe very firmly that I, with these ships and people, came from the sky, and in this belief they everywhere received me, after they had overcome their fear.

Who or what takes priority over God in our lives?

Fear of death and idolatry of youth have prompted vain neurotics to spend ever-greater fortunes on cosmetic products and surgeries to stave off age just a little while longer.

I never strike out at any life form. The only things I attack are icons of conspicuous consumption. People put objects in front of their life, in front of anything that has real importance. They make this 'thing' their God.

In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar.

On closer inspection, the hero status accorded to Abraham, Moses and David in the Old Testament (and echoed in the New Testament) is rooted not in their moral perfection but in their uncompromising dedication to the cause of Yahweh and their rugged trust in the promises of God rather than lapsing into the idolatry of many of their contemporaries.

When man makes himself his own Sun—that is, his own God—then he destroys his world. As ex-communist Whittaker Chambers observed, Marx and his minions were merely echoing the first mistake of man, initiated way back in the Garden of Eden: ye shall be as gods.

At a more material level, one might better accuse communists of fashioning a golden calf than channeling an unclean spirit. What communists effectively bowed down to was just that: a material idol forged and focused on money, property, gold. It was not about the soul. The key to the communist-Marxist utopia would be economics. Solve the economic problem, the communists believed, and you would solve the human problem.

Don't make gods into demons.

When literature becomes overly erudite, it means that interest in the art has gone and curiosity about the artist is what's important. It becomes a kind of idolatry.

This is so American, man: either make something your god and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.

There is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship---be it Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles---is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

You get to decide what to worship.