Christianity Archives - Page 21 of 38

Idolatry – Modern Idols

“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry”.
Colossians 3:5

”’You shall have no other gods before me. “Thou shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.’”
Exodus 20:3-6

“Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”
1 John 5:21

Idolatry is alive and well in the modern age, despite what you hear in Sunday school. You might think it was hundreds of years ago when men would worship and serve idols. We have idols today, just in different forms. Ever heard of American Idol? The name itself gives away the purpose of the show.

On a large scale, men worship money or materials and dedicate their entire lives to their acquisition. Others worship knowledge and science, and elevate man to the same level as God by believing that there is nothing we do not know. Men worship pleasure and enjoyment, or work and accomplishment. The instant we place anything above God in importance, it has become an idol. It has become a god, and we have placed it ahead of the one true God.

Most likely your idolatry is hidden.

It does not even seem like idolatry to you. Sports are one of these idols. Men devote hours and days of their lives to watching men run around chasing a leather sack of air. They build shrines in their homes with all the paraphernalia that a good idol worshiper would possess. They clock in to worship service every Saturday with extreme reverence and faithfulness to the game of games, more than they ever bring to any service of the Lord.

These men faithfully consume every minute of the game, because unlike church, watching sports is actually enjoyable to them. They never complain if the game goes into overtime, in fact, they get excited and even more into the game. But heaven forbid the worship service to the God of the universe go one minute past schedule. They know countless facts about the history of their team. They know all the statistics and are up to date on every bit of information a devoted worshiper needs to know about his sport. But when it comes to bible knowledge, these men may not even know all the books, much less actually know what the Word has to say.

This is idolatry; it is fundamentally unmasculine.

These idolatrous men have pathetic marriages. The energy they should be investing into their marriage relationship is now being spent on sports. The marriage is completely sexless and the male could fix that if he would conduct himself like a man and make himself attractive to his wife by being masculine.

Men like this are a big reason why no young men wait for marriage. Why spend your entire life waiting for a marriage that costs you everything (career/freedom.other women) and gives you no sex in return? This is the question of the young man overpowered by his hormones.

Idolatry is a disease that doesn’t always have apparent symptoms.

It does not show itself all at once, instead it slowly eats away at the idolater. It starts with a little resentment about having to go to church, because that is when all the big sports games are on television, or when you can binge your favorite show. You begin to look for ways to avoid church functions, citing “business” or some other effeminate absurdity. You justify skipping Wednesday night Bible study, because “mid week church is not really in the Bible! Why should I go?” It progresses very slowly, but in the end it has consumed your entire faith.

Maybe the idolatry disease won’t do that for you. Maybe you will be fine. It could be that you are not really idolizing those things you enjoy. Perhaps you are not taking your enjoyable activities to an extreme and worshiping them. It is possible that you are completely in control of your desires and emotions and would never worship the idols of this world. Or it could be that the virus of idolatry has already taken over, and it speaks those excuses for you. Be aware. Be vigilant. Cast down the idols.

Mantra

Idols must be cast down, they are for the weak.

Application

Destroy all idols. Gideon entered the temple of his local town and tore down the Baals (Judges 6). It is difficult to worship idols if you actually destroy them.

As human beings, we all idolize something, or we at least come close to idolizing it. This natural tendency must be mitigated and controlled. Idolatry is nothing more than our natural desire to worship something being misplaced.

We can enjoy our hobbies and the things we do to relax, all we need to do is avoid placing them above God in their importance. This is not an extreme stance.

Football is not the problem, worshiping football at the expense of your faith is the problem. We used sports as the example in this section, but people worship many other things as well:

Business
Career
Relationships
Games
Hobbies
Food
Recreation (TV)

Reject idols. Keep God first in your actions. Reject modern weakness. Be a man.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

The Good Conscience

“Pray for us, for we are confident that we have a good conscience; in all things desiring to live honorably”.
Hebrews 13:19

“The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”
1 Timothy 1:15

“Holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith”
1 Timothy 1:19

While good consciences are over-promoted in the Church, we still cannot leave them out of this discussion. Because even though there are instances of bad consciences mentioned in the Bible, there is also much scripture recording the existence and importance of a functioning conscience.

Note: some scriptures that speak about a this promote the idea that conscience must be maintained (1 Thessalonians 5:21), and that if left to its own devices the it would lend itself to evil, much like the very nature of man. If you are going to use your conscience regularly, you must be sure that it is good, working, and actually pointing you in the right direction. Because, as we have noted, if your it is evil, defiled or seared, it will lead you directly into the mouth of sin.

A well functioning conscience can be a great tool, because instead of having to think logically or run a cost-benefit analysis about an action, you can listen to that “little voice in your head” or that “feeling in your heart”.

This is not possible for all people. Many people don’t have any internal direction, so to tell them to listen to a voice inside their head is absurd. But if you have a good conscience, you can use it as a quick tool to discern between good and evil.

While not everyone has a good conscience, acquiring one should be a goal of the Christian man. Apostles have written about having a good conscience and have attested to its value and usefulness.

This does not contradict the other sections about conscience. All conscience types exist in people.

Mantra

A good conscience is efficient for life.

Application

Even though conscience is necessary, having a good conscience is still a noble and worthy goal. Even if merely for the advantage of being able to make moral decisions faster. I cannot tell you how to acquire one.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Read on! Next: The War Against The Self

The Defiled Conscience

“To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled”.
Titus 1:15

This verse speaks primarily about the unbelieving man, implying that purity of mind and conscience is contingent upon belief in the Word. This makes logical sense, as the Word is filled with various moral directions. But God also instilled a sense of morality in most men, regardless of whether or not they believe in him.

Why does God include moral directions in His words to us? Because without that direction, we would not naturally know how to behave. Our nature pulls us towards evil (Promiscuous sex/theft etc.), and the Bible commands us to resist this nature. This is a key idea: the conscience itself must be cultivated, because otherwise it lends itself to sin. What good is a conscience that points us in the wrong direction? These men have defiled, dysfunctional consciences.

The conscience can be polluted.

Each of these sections on conscience should teach us that the conscience itself is malleable, which means it can either be made into a tool, or corrupted into an evil-seeking device. This is one reason why we should not put too much trust in conscience, because we cannot always definitively prove that it is pointing us in the right direction.

The main point of our discussion about each of the conscience types is this: Conscience itself is not action, it is not a substitute for action, and by itself it will never gain salvation for your soul. Salvation can only be acquired by taking action. Neither faith, hope or good intentions can save you if you do not follow the simple salvation outline in the Bible. Obedience based action must be taken in order to claim the free gift of salvation. Whether or not your conscience is good or bad does not matter if you are not taking any action.

Mantra

Action is greater than feelings.

Application

Action will always override any emotional feeling you have. Conscience is an emotional tool, and should be treated like any other emotion. We should not deify conscience, for salvation is not found in it. We should not promote the necessity of conscience to other people, because we do not know what state their conscience is in. If we tell an individual with an evil or defiled conscience to “listen to their conscience”, they will end up doing evil.

This is your task: reject the dogma of the mandatory conscience. You will give account for your deeds, not the way you felt about them. Take action. Do good. Be a Man.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men

The Evil Conscience

“Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”
Hebrews 10:22

How could this be? A conscience that is evil? The traditionalists are going to faint when they hear about this! Could it be that there is such a thing as a conscience that directs man to do what is evil instead of what is good? Absolutely. Just as it is possible to have a broken compass that points east instead of north.

The Old Testament talks about men whose hearts desired nothing but evil continually (Genesis 6:5). These men were later annihilated by the flood. Think about Sodom and Gomorrah: do you think those guys were interested in doing what was right based on their conscience? They were only interested in sex with any man or woman they could find. Don’t be surprised, this is what the heart, mind and conscience of man can degenerate into.

The conscience of man can be such that instead of leading you to do what is right, it leads you to do what is evil. Again, like the Seared Conscience, you can either develop an evil conscience or be born with it. The difference between the seared and evil conscience is that a seared conscience is devoid of guilt or without regret from doing what is wrong, or the conscience itself is silent; an evil conscience, however, directs the heart of man towards evil instead of good, doing the opposite of what a normal, functioning conscience would do.

In theory: A good conscience keeps us from doing wrong because it is a voice within that directs us towards the right action.

An evil conscience desires for us to do what is wrong constantly, and because of this desire, there is no guilt associated with committing whatever evil deed your heart desires.

You would be surprised to hear that such a conscience is actually quite prevalent in the Church. Because it is easy to do evil and still walk into the assembly like there is nothing wrong. This is popular at highly liberal churches, which I tend to call “Adulterer’s Haven” churches, because many of them ignore the teachings of Christ on divorce and remarriage and allow anyone with an unscriptural marriage to enter their assembly.

An evil conscience will keep you sinning and give you no reason to change. All the popular tools of change endorsed by the Church (Guilt/Shame/Conscience/Fear) have been taken out of your toolbelt. According to them, you will not be able to progress. Without an overwhelming sense of guilt, how will you change?

This statement gives you a bird’s eye view into their ignorance of the subject. No emotion is necessary for change to occur, even though emotions can help on the path of change. However, guilt is uncommon for men, as it tends to be primarily a female emotion or one experienced by weak beta-males.

Men, you must grow, train, progress and improve with or without emotional help.

Few modern men know this. You aren’t going to feel like going to work every day, no one does, but you go anyway. No one is going to feel like working out every day, but you do it anyways. No man is going to feel like listening to and loving their wife every day, but they do it.

Men take action regardless of how they feel at the time. Regardless of all emotion, men must press on and do what is right. They must work, improve, train and move towards being the fully formed and functional men they need to be. Reject the weak man’s idea of conscience, embrace the rigid strength of discipline unaltered by feeling.

Mantra

Reject conscience, embrace action.

Application

If you have an evil conscience, you must do the opposite of what your conscience tells you to do. It is as simple as that. If your conscience is evil, it is pulling you towards evil action, so you must resist your conscience and oppose it in order to do what is right. Again, it does not matter if you feel like doing what is right, or if you want to, or what your motivation is, it only matters if you do what is right or not. What are your actions? They can be good or evil regardless of what kind of conscience you have.

Again, and at risk of being overly redundant, reject the idea of the necessity of conscience.

Conscience is a tool to be used for change, but change is possible without this tool. This is a principle fact of life. You must do what is right regardless of emotional states, including the emotional state of a conscience. You must focus and take action. Do what is right. Be a Man.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

The Seared Conscience

“Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron”
1 Timothy 4:2

“Trust your conscience”, your grandparents used to tell you – As if your conscience always tells the truth. “What does your conscience tell you to do?” your parents ask you when you ask them a difficult question about the course of action you should take; as if conscience is a sentient being that can answer you, instead of a mere emotion. The conscience is a minor feeling that rests in your gut.

What if your conscience has been damaged? Should you trust it then? Should you listen to it then? What if your conscience is not functioning and is temporarily, if not permanently, broken? Should we listen to the emotional dribble of a voice in our head which has been marred by scorching hot metal? No. This is classic dogma propagated by people in the church too weak and afraid to challenge the traditions that have been passed down through generations.

Your father taught you about conscience, just as his father, and his father before him, yet they were all dead wrong.

They all taught you lessons contrary to scripture. They failed to teach you about the reality of perverted consciences, of evil, vile and disgusting consciences. Preachers do not talk about seared consciences.

Some consciences are seared over ages of repetitive sin until nothing but a fragment of what once was a good conscience is left in the mind. The voice of this conscience is frail and fragile, and it can have no more influence over a man.

However, even more frightening than this are those who were born with a seared conscience. From birth they possess a dysfunctional moral compass. These people are classically known as psychopaths or sociopaths. To deny the existence of these individuals is to deny reality.

Maybe it was something in their genetic code. Perhaps the same way that diseases and mutations occur from the genes of an individual, so also a seared conscience generates from the very DNA of a man.

These individuals do exist in the Church today, and they have no idea what to do because they are taught that conscience is mandatory.

And those are just the individuals who feel guilty about their broken conscience, which itself seems to imply that there is some form of a conscience present. But do not confuse guilt with conscience. Those with damaged consciences have no internal, emotional guide, no Christian example, no role model of who to act like because the weak people perpetuate the myth of the obligatory conscience. This is a disgrace.

Defiled consciences (Titus 1:15-16), evil consciences (Heb 10:22), irrelevant consciences (Acts 23:1) and seared consciences are real entities. And guess what? You can receive salvation even if you possess one of these conscience types.

“Impossible!”, cries the traditionalist, “You must have the conscience to act morally”.

Wrong, you must simply know which actions are moral and which are not in order to act morally. Morality is not an emotion. It is an evaluation of the rightness or wrongness of an action based on logic. An evaluation that can be performed with or without that emotion known as ‘conscience’.

Mantra

Action is more important than any feeling I may feel.

Application

Again, purge your mind of the idea that conscience is necessary. It is simply another emotion that is a tool for growth, but not a requirement. Reject traditional conservatism that propagates the necessity of conscience. The irony of this is that the genre of Christianity so renowned for rejecting the emotionalism of liberals still preaches the necessity of the emotion of conscience.

Reject the liberalism that wallows in all emotions and deifies conscience as the gateway to change and righteousness. It is possible to ‘abstain from every form of evil’ (1 Thessalonians 5:22) without feeling positive or negative emotions about the experience. Obliterate all ideas of the requirement of conscience from your mind.

Again, all that matters is action.

What actions are you taking?

What are you doing?

Are you growing in skill?

Are you progressing in knowledge?

How can you prove to yourself that you are making progress?

These are the important questions. The answers to these questions are the answers that matter, not whether or not you are feeling like doing the right thing or not. Take action. Make progress. Do not get bogged down by the emotions of the weak beta male pew warmer. Be a Man.

This is your task: Work again on rejecting the dogma of the necessity of conscience.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

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