Idolatry In The Bible Quotes & Sayings

The Bible is right: A deluge of images does encourage idolatry. Look at the cults of personality in America today. Look at Hollywood. Look at Washington. I'd like to see the next presidential race be run according to Second Commandment principles. No commercials. A radio-only debate. We need an ugly president. I know we're missing out on some potential Abe Lincolns because they'd look gawky and gangly on TV. — A. J. Jacobs

By setting such strong, harsh dichotomies God taught Israel that any assimilation to pagan idolatry is intolerable. It was His way of preserving Israel's spiritual health and posterity. God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. The killing of the Canaanite children not only served to prevent assimilation to Canaanite identity but also served as a shattering, tangible illustration of Israel's being set exclusively apart for God. — William Lane Craig

The greatest miracle of the Bible is that the prophets of Israel could keep a religion as clean as a hounds tooth amid all the corruption and idolatry of the nations surrounding them. — Billy Graham

Either you allow Holy Scriptures to change you, or you will normally try to use it to change
and clobber
other people. It is the height of idolatry to use the supposed Word of God so that my small self can be in control and be right. But I am afraid this has been more the norm than the exception in the use of the Bible. — Richard Rohr

I'm a serial dater. When I see someone I like, we go on multiple dates. — Lance Bass

We call an obsession with having someone's approval 'co-dependency;' the Bible's word for it is idolatry. A country can be an idol. A family can be an idol. — John Ortberg

Dating for me in my twenties was like this musical-chairs thing. Everybody was running around and having fun. Then I hit thirty and it was like the music stopped and everybody started sitting down. I didn't want to be the only one left without a chair. Sometimes I think I married my husband just because he was the closest chair to me at thirty. Sometimes I think I should have just waited for someone who might be a better partner, and maybe I should have, but that seemed risky. What I really wish I'd done is thought more about marriage sooner. Like when I was in my twenties. — Meg Jay

We pick and choose our favorite verses while ignoring the texts we cannot comprehend or don't particularly like. We rationalize the verses that are too radical. We scrub down the verses that are too supernatural. We put Scripture on the chopping block of human logic and end up with a neutered gospel. We commit intellectual idolatry, creating God in our image. So instead of living a life that resembles the supernatural standard set in Scripture, we follow an abridged version of the Bible that looks an awful lot like us. — Mark Batterson

Time does not heal old wounds. New ones do. — Kalynn Campbell

Maserati. Coco's beloved — James Patterson

What is the root of the sin of sexual identity? Being a lesbian was not just a description of the kind of sex I liked to have. Being a lesbian encompassed a whole range of feelings and perception, character qualities, and sensibilities. It reflected the depth of my nonsexual friendships and the integrated community I wanted to build with women. Being a lesbian also reflected the kind of professor I was, the classes I taught, the books I read, and the dissertations I directed. I was all in. And, I was a jumble of emotions, because according to the Bible, what I called community, God called idolatry. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

Deep down inside, don't we at least suspect we are really made for shared relationship and not competitive acquisition? I think we do know this. But we're thrown into a modern world where identity and purpose are almost entirely based in a ruthless contest for status and stuff. Without a primary orientation of the soul toward God, life gets reduced to the pursuit of power and the acquisition of things. Attempting to yoke God to that kind of agenda is what the Bible calls idolatry - God harnessed as means, the holy reduced to utility. — Brian Zahnd

the passionate defense of the Bible as a "history book" among the more conservative wings of Christianity, despite intentions, isn't really an act of submission to God; it is making God submit to us. In its most extreme forms, making God look like us is what the Bible calls idolatry. — Peter Enns

If you are preaching on the first commandment ("Thou shalt have no other gods before me") or Ephesians 5:5 (which calls greed idolatry) or any of the several hundred other places in the Bible that speak of idols, you could quote David Foster Wallace, the late postmodern novelist. In his Kenyon College commencement speech he argues eloquently and forcefully that "everyone worships. The only choice we get is what to worship."32 He goes on to say everyone has to "tap real meaning in life," and whatever you use to do that, whether it is money, beauty, power, intellect, or something else, it will drive your life because it is essentially a form of worship. He enumerates why each form of worship does not merely make you fragile and exhausted but can "eat you alive." If you lay out his argument in support of fundamental biblical teaching, even the most secular audience will get quiet and keep listening to what you say next. — Timothy J. Keller

It's always been like this, he thinks. From when Moses saw the promised land that he could never enter, people have been on their deathbeds just wanting to see what happens next. He wonders if that's what makes the promised land holy: that you can see it but you can't quite reach it. The grass is always greener on the other side of personal extinction. — James S.A. Corey

Our soul's problem, however, is not its neediness; it's our fallenness. Our need was meant to point us to God. Instead, we fasten our minds and bodies and wills on other sources of ultimate devotion, which the Bible calls idolatry. — John Ortberg

If you feel that without a certain person, or position, or achievement, your life would be not worth living, you may be deeper into idolatry than you think. — Colin S. Smith

Great bosses and world-class organizations hire motivated people, set high expectations, and give their people room to become remarkable. — Seth Godin

The idea of the Bible as a divine guidebook, a map for getting through the terra incognita of life, is our golden calf. It's a substitute for the wilderness wandering that the life of faith necessarily entails. — Timothy Beal

I am deeply distressed by what I only can call in our Christian culture the idolatry of the Scriptures. For many Christians, the Bible is not a pointer to God but God himself ... God cannot be confined within the covers of a leather-bound book. I develop a nasty rash around people who speak as if mere scrutiny of its pages will reveal precisely how God thinks and precisely what God wants. — Brennan Manning

We may have loved the god that we made up in our minds, but the God of the Bible, we hate. — David Platt

The Bible sees greed as a form of idolatry, because a greedy person worships things instead of God. Greed and envy have their roots in selfishness. — Billy Graham

I tried to close my ears to the strange worshipful chanting and fix my mind on God, but the Egyptians' idolatry weighed down my weary shoulders and brought tears to my closed eyes. — Kristen Reed

Technology is the idol of our age. The Bible describes the evils of worshipping things built by the hand of man. Back then, it was a simple statue, today it is far more insidious. And for every problem technology creates, we look to technology for solutions. — James Rozoff

I tell you one you straight off in Scotland - Nick de Luca. I don't see his name quoted, but I've played against Nick quite a lot and he is a good player - one of the trickiest centres I've played against. — Brian O'Driscoll

The single most exciting thing that happened for me was getting to spend some time in the studio with both Marty Stuart and Vince Gill. — Charlie Worsham

According to Robert, his friend Moses was a soldier in the first war, as he described it. He fought Indians and soldiers in red coats. — Nancy B. Brewer

We are molding Jesus into our image. He's beginning to look a lot like us because, after all, that is who we are most comfortable with. The danger now is when we gather in our church buildings to sing, and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshiping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead, we may be worshiping ourselves. — David Platt

The heart of all idolatry in the Bible is the de-godding of God. — D. A. Carson

To get overprotective about particular readings of the Bible is always in danger of idolatry. — N. T. Wright

Idolatry is huge in the Bible, dominant in our personal lives, and irrelevant in our mistaken estimations — Os Guinness

Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do in order to become acceptable to God is mere superstition and religious folly. — Immanuel Kant

It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor. — Stephen King

Programming in Go is like being young again (but more productive!). — Anneli Jaatteenmaki