Michael Bunker

Modern Religious Idols Michael Bunker

Idol worship may seem like just a curious anachronism to our modern sensibilities. The Old Testament is replete with God's commands against it and Israel's temptation to it, but the average reader of today may feel quite insulated from the whole matter. Idolatry is dismissed as ancient naiveté, the impulse of the unlearned, and a superstition that the enlightened man has outgrown. In the following pages, Michael Bunker strikes at the heart of such comfortable assumptions by demonstrating that idolatry is still as alive and malignant as ever, the difference between the ancient world and ours being only that idolatry has become more subtle and idolaters more sophisticated. Instead of having outgrown idolatry, men have nurtured and perfected it. No longer do we craft our idols out of wood and stone, leaving their obvious lifelessness to unsettle our consciences; now we give our idols the breath of life by enshrining them in unbiblical ideas, selfish values and worldly assumptions. Idolatry has always been a matter of the heart; the external manifestations merely change with the times and fall in and out of fashion. The purpose of this present volume is to expose and tear down the subtle idols of the heart that have been enshrined all around us and within us.