Judges, Ruth: Revised Edition (The NIV Application Commentary)

by K. Lawson Younger

(1) There is a general misunderstanding of the dangers of idolatry, even in a modern context. Idolatry is not simply the making and worshiping of a graven image. Idolatry is the blurring or obscuring of the distinction between the living God who creates and the creation he has created (Exod 20:4–6). Anything that is substituted or added to the worship of the one true God is idolatry. The myth of secularism is that idolatry cannot exist in a secular society, for secular society has no god at its heart whose reality makes other objects of worship into idols. But idolatry does exist in so-called secular society. Secularization has a constant, ever-present friend labeled by sociologists as sacralization—the development by which “people, things, events and processes are bestowed with ‘sacred’ status” (e.g., money, self, human sexuality).106