#idolatry

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

I had this sort of idolatry for certain actors who preceded me, people who inspired me, so I'm honored to be that way for young actors. ↗

— Meryl Streep

#certain actors #had #honored #i #idolatry

The system of idolatry, invented by modern christianity, far surpasses in absurdity anything that we have ever heard of. ↗

— Orson Pratt

#anything #christianity #ever #far #heard

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

mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the purpose then. But now, when all purpose was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire. ↗

— George Eliot

#idolatry #money #love

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

Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain. ↗

— John Calvin

#brain #certain #forge #forsake #god

When people say, "I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself," they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's. ↗

— Timothy Keller

#forgiveness

It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#believed #could #curious #handling #how