Another Idol Bites the Dust

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Matt Van Teuteberg

 

While I was sitting in my 50% cotton, 50% polyester hoodie eating shrimp flavored Ramon noodles and thinking about Evan's Flipside articles from the past semester, something dawned upon me as I reread his idea of who the God of the Bible is.  If you didn't get a chance to read those articles123, Evan goes out of his way to describe God as an oppressive, unfair, mistake-riddled hob goblin that cannot be understood and sits back doing nothing as his creation suffers on this planet.

To be quite honest, I think Evan's version of the Biblical god is a big time suck-a-rama god.  The fact is Evan's view of God is false and is therefore guilty of idolatry4.  An idol is something a person holds as highest regard in their life instead of the God of the Bible.  In the olden days, people would create an idol out of wood, stone, metal, or maybe even clam shells and worship it instead of God, like in Exodus 32 when the Israelites worshipped a golden calf.

Today in America, the average idolater doesn't have wood chips in his beard because he spent the better part of the day carving a giant lobster out of wood to worship, but he does have many idols in his heart and mind.   People today create idols by elevating sex, money, or themselves to the position of God in their life or by defining god in their own terms.  When Evan tries to define God as a mean, sloppy, tyrant, he is just creating an idol, but instead of worshipping the idol to try and get things, Evan knocks his idol over like a strawman.

A strawman argument6 is when someone applies false attributes or actions to someone as a way to discredit them or win an argument against them.  What Evan does is apply false ideas of who God is to discredit Him.  But the problem is these ideas Evan points out about God are not true, since God is a perfect, loving, forgiving God who created us to live with Him and be blessed by Him.  He created this amazing Earth for us, and even after we sinned against Him, He still created a way for us to be reconnected to Him through the death, burial, and resurrection of His son Jesus Christ.  So, while your strawman god may be on the ground Evan, the Lord of all creation is still in Heaven yielding all the real power and glory5.

To be honest, it is hard to understand some of the verses in the Bible.  Not only are we mere humans who have intellectual limits and sinful hearts living in a fallen, broken world, but time, culture, language differences, and living in the New Covenant can interfere with our ability to understand some of the things in the Old Testament.  As time goes on, I hope to be able to shed some reason and understanding on these issues.

Sources

1.  Gillick, Evan. God Hates Brains.  The Flipside, Vol. 7, Issue 2.

2.  Gillick, Evan. Cosmic Fellatio: Relative Self-Importance as Illustrated Through Analogy Likely to Offend a Lot of People.  The Flipside, Vol. 7, Issue 5.

3.  Gillick, Evan. Come on and Celebrate. The Flipside, Vol. 7, Issue 7.

4.  Exodus 20:3-4

5.  Jeremiah 10:6

6.  http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-straw-man-argument.htm

 



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