#idolatry

Idolatry is like love, but less idealized. Its icon is still beautiful, but only charisma makes it attractive enough to be worshipped. ↗

— Bauvard

#idolatry #love #beauty

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

— John Selden

#idolatry #man #opinion #own #thought

Every man becomes the image of the God he adores. He whose worship is directed to a dead thing becomes dead. He who loves corruption rots. He who loves a shadow becomes, himself, a shadow. He who loves things that must perish lives in dread of their perishing. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#idolatry #worship #love

You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#fundamentalism #god #humor #idolatry #spirituality

‎A careful reading of the Old and New Testaments shows that idolatry is nothing like the crude picture that springs to mind of a sculpture in some distant country. The idea is highly sophisticated, drawing together the complexities of motivation in individual psychology, the social environment, and also the unseen world. Idols are not just on pagan altars, but in well-educated human hearts and minds ↗

— Richard Keyes

#old-testament #richard-keyes #education

By giving us control, our new technologies tend to enhance existing idols in our lives. Instead of becoming more like Christ through the forming and shaping influence of the church community, we form, and shape, and personalize our community to make it more like us. We take control of things that are not ours to control. Could it be that our desire for control is short-circuiting the process of change and transformation God wants us to experience through the mess of real world, flesh and blood, face-to-face relationships? ↗

— Tim Challies

#discipleship #idolatry #change

Idolatry' is the practice of seeking the source and provision of what we need either physically or emotionally in someone or something other than the one true God. It is the tragically pathetic attempt to squeeze life out of lifeless forms that cannot help us meet our real needs. ↗

— Scott J. Hafemann

#faith

One must love God first, and only then can one love one's closest of kin and neighbors. We must not be idols to one another, for such is not the will of God. ↗

— Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

#eastern-orthodoxy #family #god #idolatry #love

If change and growth are not programmed into your spirituality, if there are not serious warnings about the blinding nature of fear and fanaticism, your religion will always end up worshiping the status quo and protecting your present ego position and personal advantage as if it were God. ↗

— Richard Rohr

#humility #idolatry #status-quo #nature

What I find interesting is that the people that follow your Twitters are called 'followers.' Talk about false idolatry, right? ↗

— Emilio Estevez

#called #false #find #follow #followers