Idols

             Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. (Hebrews 7:25)

 

In some ways, the ancient pagans had it easy. They had statues to show them their gods. That’s probably one of the reasons the Roman Catholic Church got so into crucifixes and stained-glass windows. Another reason was to depict the stories told in Scripture to people who couldn’t read or didn’t have books. The Jews were commanded not to make images to represent God. Eventually, He sent His own representation and Representative, who lived sinlessly, taught, performed miracles, died, and rose again. Only 20 years later, however, Paul was chiding the Corinthian church for getting hung up and divided over Peter, Paul, and Apollos.   

We’re still doing the same thing today. Whether it’s preachers, teachers, celebrities, athletes or their teams, scientists or other experts, or politicians, we choose our champions and are ready to go to war on their behalf. And there’s some benefit to this. As we discuss and debate, we may learn something useful if we’re not already enthralled by one or another. I’m not suggesting that we should believe everything everyone tells us, but that we should be wary of hitching our mental wagons to anyone less than Jesus because the others might be right about one thing and wrong about another and none of them stand before God interceding for us. I suspect too many people (some of whom claim to be Christians) idolize too many people.