#idolatry

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty. ↗

— Ann Oakley

#families #idolatry #nothing #other #than

Mindset of the man too busy: I am too busy BEING God to become LIKE God. ↗

— Mark Buchanan

#rest #business

I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them. ↗

— Augustine of Hippo

#disillusionment #idolatry #friendship

Evil then consists not in being created but in the rebellious idolatry by which humans worship and honour elements of the natural world rather than the God who made them. The result is that the cosmos is out of joint. Instead of humans being God's wise vice-regents over creation, they ignore the creator and try to worship something less demanding, something that will give them a short-term fix of power or pleasure. ↗

— N.T. Wright

#idolatry #sin #nature

The problems afflicting a nation are always in equal measure spiritual crises. ↗

— Ron Suskind

#idolatry #materialism #education

What God says is best, indeed is best, though all men in the world are against it. Seeing, then, that God prefers his religion; seeing God prefers a tender conscience; seeing they that make themselves fools for the kingdom of heaven are wisest; and that the poor man that loveth Christ is richer than the greatest man in the world that hates him: Shame, depart, thou art an enemy to my salvation. ↗

— John Bunyan

#idolatry #opinions #shame #wisdom #art

Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more. ↗

— William Wordsworth

#avarice #expense #high #idolatry #living

Idolatry is in a man's own thought, not in the opinion of another. ↗

— John Selden

#idolatry #man #opinion #own #thought

The author points to the impact of what he called Dutch disease, where the discovery of found wealth from a particular commodity causes a culture to atrophy with respect to work ethic and broader development. Continuing wealth from the single commodity is taken for granted. The government, flush with wealth, is expected to be generous. When the price of that commodity drops, a government which would remain in power dare not cut back on this generosity. ↗

— Daniel Yergin

#idolatry #materialism #prosperity #money

When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what’s more, you reflect what you worship not only to the object itself but also outward to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners, or customers rather than as human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat other people as actual or potential sex objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it and treat other people as either collaborators, competitors, or pawns. These and many other forms of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and of those whose lives they touch. ↗

— N.T. Wright

#idolatry #idols #image-of-god #money #power