Can Society Be An Idol?

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| Modern Idolatry series |

• Why is Faith the Answer to Sin?
• Why is Good So Good?
• Have We Idolized Reason?
• Can Society Be An Idol?

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Society Can Be an Idol

We’ve seen that God alone defines good and evil. Anytime we decide for ourselves what’s good and what’s evil, we repeat the sin of Adam and Eve when they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Anything we allow to subtly influence our understanding of what is good, we allow to hold a position that’s reserved for God alone, making it an idol in our lives. Last time we saw that, in this context, we often allow our own reason to become an idol when we reason our way to choosing what’s good rather than relying on God’s definition and direction. In this way, we allow ourselves to define what’s good rather than looking to God.

We also often allow others to influence our definition of good. This is one of the most common forms of modern idolatry: allowing society to influence our understanding of right and wrong. The problem is that society is a blind guide for morality; only God, not man, has a clear view of what’s truly good for us.

We Get It Backwards

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

Isaiah 5:20

Earlier in this series, we saw why getting good and evil straight is so important because when God calls something good it’s because it’s good for us; when He calls something evil it’s because it does us harm. Last time we saw that when we take something that’s actually evil and call it good, we are endorsing something that’s harmful to us. We make the opposite mistake as well, condemning something that’s actually helpful. Make no mistake, society gets it wrong in both ways, let’s take a look at one example today.

Being “Nice” Isn’t Always Loving

Our culture has its own definition of love (something good) and hate (something evil). But, like we’ve seen, when people try to define these things, we inevitably get it wrong. Society’s definition goes something like this: “It’s loving to tell someone what they’re doing is good. By contrast, it’s hating to tell someone what they’re doing is bad.” More simply, society tries to indoctrinate us with these ideas of “nice” and “mean” as the definition for “good/loving” and “evil/hate”.

So much of our morality (especially what we’re taught as children) is based on this idea. Maybe you’re like me and, as a result, it was confusing to read these times where Jesus’ words and actions could easily be described as mean/harsh. I would scratch my head wondering if I really knew what love looked like.

“You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.”

John 8:44

But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Matthew 16:23

And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.

John 2:15

You see, here’s the problem with this definition for love/hate: Imagine with me that someone is doing something that will hurt them. If you encourage them to do it, is that love? If you try to help them not do it, is that hate? Obviously not.

More to the point, as we discussed earlier in this series, when God calls something evil it’s because of the harm it does to us. So, when we truly rely on His definition of good and evil, we can be confident in what will cause harm.

Who Will Be Our Guide?

Now I’m not saying this so we have free reign to be harsh toward people. In our series titled “Don’t Judge, Help”, we talk more specifically about the fact that our goal isn’t to pass judgment but to actually help people by keeping them from these things that cause us harm. However, as we emphasized in that series, on our own it’s impossible to know what will actually be helpful to someone, how to actually move them one step closer to having faith in God’s definition of good and evil. Instead, we must rely on God’s direction to know how to be helpful to a particular person in a particular situation. This serves as an illustration of our main point in this series:

We need a guide to know what’s loving, and, more broadly, to know what’s good (and evil). The question becomes, who will be that guide? Our culture/society continually offers its own definitions as a guide for us. Like we discussed last time, our reason offers another option for us to analyze what we should do in every situation. The options don’t stop there; we could look to our feelings, to what would bring success, or just a gut intuition. However, all of these are a poor substitute for the only One who actually has the authority to define good and evil. At the end of the day, all of these options represent a form of idolatry where we choose for ourselves what is good and what’s evil. The choice before you today is this: Whose going to be your guide? In making that choice, realize that you’re back in the Garden of Eden, deciding from what tree you’re going to eat. When we choose to reject God and instead define good and evil for ourselves, we are choosing the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The inevitable consequence of that choice is the same as it was for Adam and Eve in the Garden: death.

When we choose to reject God and instead define good and evil for ourselves, we are choosing the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The inevitable consequence of that choice is the same as it was for Adam and Eve in the Garden: death.