Incognito Idolatry

Think of a Christian you look up to.

Maybe it’s a parent or sibling. Maybe it’s a kind, elderly neighbor who first encouraged you to go to church. Maybe it’s your pastor. Maybe it’s a small group leader who took an interest in your spiritual wellbeing when no one else had the time.

Do you have someone in mind?

When was the last time you disagreed with them?

These questions will make sense in a moment. Look at the following two verses:

“I am [Yahweh] your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery.”

Exodus 20:2, HCSB

When the people saw that Moses delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who will go before us because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt — we don’t know what has happened to him!”

‭‭Exodus‬ ‭32‬:‭1‬, HCSB‬‬

The first text specifies that Yahweh (the LORD) brought the Israelites out of Egypt. It also specifies that Yahweh is God. And it goes on to say:

“Do not have other gods besides Me. Do not make an idol for yourself, whether in the shape of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. You must not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the fathers’ sin, to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing faithful love to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commands.”

‭‭Exodus‬ ‭20‬:‭3‬-‭6‬, ‭HCSB‬‬. Emphasis added.

In the second text, not only have the people forgotten the Ten Commandments¹—the basic legal expectations for the nation of Israel—but they have forgotten the very identity of their Redeemer.

Moses didn’t bring them out of Egypt. Yahweh did! God saved them, not a man!

In the same way, we owe our salvation to God. We don’t owe it to the person God used to bring us to saving knowledge of him.

This story in Exodus is a prime example of leader idolatry—though they admittedly made a golden calf, not a man—and it should be a wake up call for all of us. Even the most godly, wonderful, humble leader (Numbers 12:3) is not—and never will be—God. We do ourselves, and our leaders, a disservice when we idolize them like this.

God held Moses responsible for the people’s idolatry (Exodus 32:7-9), even sarcastically agreeing with the people that Moses was the one who brought Israel up from Egypt. But Moses—in his humility—reiterates that God was the one who actually rescued them (Exodus 32:11).

If we idolize our leaders, God will hold them accountable for failing to set us straight. And one sure sign that we have idolized our leaders is when we refuse to ever challenge their thinking.²

Look at what Luke wrote about a church Paul founded:

“The people here were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, since they welcomed the message with eagerness and examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”

‭‭Acts‬ ‭17‬:‭11‬, ‭HCSB‬‬

The Bereans would have taken Paul to task if he said something that went against Scripture (the Old Testament scriptures that nowhere explicitly speak of Jesus). Luke refers to them as “open-minded” (εὐγενής, a word literally referring to their “noble and generous feelings”).³

This means that disagreements are not an inherent sign of immaturity, though constant disagreements might be (Proverbs 26:21; Proverbs 29:22). Disagreements—whether with friends, a spouse, politicians, or church leaders—should be a sign to come together and figure out a plan to move forward, not a reason to stop communicating completely.⁴

But why do we try to avoid disagreements? Because we care more about what people think of us than we do about truth. The fear of man is ultimately idolatry (Proverbs 29:25).

So let’s not put our leaders on a pedestal. Let’s lovingly challenge them—like the Bereans did—when they go astray. And let’s accept their correction of us when they call us out on our idolatry of them.

There’s nothing wrong with looking up to people, but keep them in proper perspective. Only Jesus died for you. Only Jesus freed you from sin and death. Only Jesus’ words are entirely trustworthy. Only Jesus is God.

Others can—even unintentionally—lead you astray. Some might even do it on purpose.

But this is all the more reason to trust Jesus. To listen to him. To follow him. And to compare everything else with his infallible word (John 16:13).

In this with you.

Thanks for reading!

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Notes and References

1. Exodus 20:1-17 is the giving of the Ten Commandments. Moses was present with the people at this time (Exodus 20:19-20). It is Hollywood that has convinced us that Moses crushed the as-yet-unknown Ten Commandments upon finding the people worshipping the golden calf. ↩︎
2. God will also hold us accountable for failing to call out our leaders when they have gone astray (Ezekiel 3:16-21). ↩︎
3. Franco Montanari, ed. Madeleine Goh and Chad Schroeder, The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek (Leiden: Brill, 2015). ↩︎
4. Worse even than cutting off communication is castigating people as fools or heretics and dragging reputations through the mud. This type of attitude will never result in productive conversations. ↩︎