Jason Hood on Idolatry

Jason Hood, ‘Idolatry, the Gospel, and the Imitation of God’, Christianity Today (24 March 2011).

Jason Hood draws attention to Chris Wright’s assertion (at the recent Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, and elsewhere in publications) that idolatry is the greatest obstacle to Christian mission and world evangelisation.

Indeed, there has been something of a flurry of treatments of idolatry by evangelicals in recent years. Hood profiles books by Tim Keller (Counterfeit Gods), Brian Rosner (Greed as Idolatry), and Greg Beale (We Become What We Worship). (To these I would add Julian Hardyman’s Idols and Trevin Wax’s Holy Subversion, which helpfully address the same theme.)

As Hood says:

‘The temptation to idolatry is multifaceted and ever-present, and therefore must be fought without respite. Harmonizing Keller, Wright, Beale, and Scripture leads us to three antidotes: (1) the identification of idols and their attractions; (2) the embrace of the gospel and its idol-destroying promises; and (3) the worship and imitation of the One True God rather than false gods.’

He expands briefly on these three points before concluding:

‘Fueled by gospel promises and freed from slavery to dead idols, Christians choose to worship and imitate the one true God and his Son. As they do so, they are changed, and they begin to reflect the glorious likeness of the self-giving God and the resurrected, ruling Son (2 Cor. 3:18).’