Like a scarecrow in a melon patch, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good.

Jeremiah 10:5 (NIV)
The church in the West seems pathetic. For much of the twentieth century, Christianity has been perceived as drag on important social “progress.” Biblical views are routinely dismissed as dated, irrelevant, and powerless to shape public discourse. Instead, public life is now dominated by idolatry—man-made ideologies that have moved society further and further from God and His standards.

In the time of Jeremiah, Judah also appeared to be on the wrong end of social change. A once powerful nation, she was now vulnerable to the military and cultural superiority of the Babylonian empire. Because of this, it would have been tempting for Judah to believe that God had failed her, that the pagan gods of the nations really wielded the power in the world.

Into this seemingly hopeless situation, Jeremiah spoke a word of great comfort: the idols of the nations are pathetic and powerless (v. 5). Though they appear strong and triumphant, in reality they are nothing but carved and decorated logs cut from the forest and secured to keep them from tottering in a stiff breeze (vv. 3-4). Verse five mocks the idols for their impotence. How could anything be called a “god” that could neither speak nor even move without being carried? “Do not fear them,” God concludes, for they are like comical scarecrows, unable to do anything at all, whether good or bad.

In our time, idolatry is just as rampant. It is not often in the West that one will find people bowing to carved statues as did these nations. Nevertheless, our society has managed to nurture or invent its own idolatries: man-made “religions” or “isms,” whether pluralism, socialism, Communism, egotism, postmodernism, relativism, nihilism, Buddhism, naturalism, or materialism.

Even in the Church, idolatry raises its head as a gospel of pop-psychology and social wellbeing or in the reliance on management and marketing techniques over the truth of Scripture. These ideologies dominate public and ecclesiastical discourse today and by all accounts appear to be in the cultural ascendancy. Appearances, however, are often deceiving. The God of the Bible seems to take particular glory in allowing His rivals to reach full strength before He humiliates or destroys them. In the end, all these ideologies will prove impotent against the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. The true Church appears to be a feckless minority, soon to be vanquished from the world. The Lord Jesus, however, promises that He will build His church, and no power in hell can prevail against Him.

Christians should be emboldened by this truth to resist idolatry both in the church and in the world. The idolatries of the surrounding world may seem invincible, but the church must proclaim that in the end, they are powerless before the speaking and living God of the Bible.
article adapted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located one and a half miles east of Rt. 222 on Rt. 40.