Indeed, anything can be made into an idol if it begins to take over the work of God himself. We live in a tension between austerity and excess, where many of us live with more than the bare minimum, and, because of this, we have the potential to misplace our ultimate concern . Yet, when God s blessings become seen as entitlements when we neglect to acknowledge the Giver of every good gift when our love is so disordered that an inanimate object commands more attention than our neighbor we have idolatry. But if it is the case that we have meditated sufficiently on God s law, God can awaken us to our idolatry. Today s text from Deuteronomy serves as a reminder not only of our idolatrous tendencies, but also of the consequences of idolatry.
Idolatry leads to our own exile.
It leads to separation from God. This is the ultimate irony that in the attempt to be more intimate with the divine, the idolater grows farther away from it. The consequences of idolatry whether of things sacred or of things profane are all too often felt in the Church. In addition to separating us from God, idols separate us from one another. It should be of deep concern to us all that there is, within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America today, division over the interpretation of the very confessions that give us our identity.