Only the Prophets Can Save Us Now

Only the Prophets Can Save Us Now

The prophets, with piercing reality, always knew when God’s people were worshiping and serving idols. Those same prophets would judge America today as an idol-infested wilderness. We don’t have a golden calf; we have the goose that lays the golden eggs. We don’t have a bronze snake on a stick in the Temple; we have the American flag in the sanctuary. The prophets would make short work of our hypocrisy.

Only prophets can help us now. As Cornel West reminds, “At the heart of the prophetic in the Hebrew scripture is an indictment of those who worship the idol of human power.” The prophets clearly saw the uselessness of idols and images.

Habakkuk, for instance, mocked the makers of idols: “What use is an idol once its maker has shaped it— a cast image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in what has been made, though the product is only an idol that cannot speak!” (Habakkuk 2:18). All our socially constructed images are lies. The followers of idols mistake the lies as the truth.

Hosea skewers us for following fake gods that cannot save. He cries, “What use is an idol once its maker has shaped it—a cast image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in what has been made, though the product is only an idol that cannot speak! Alas for you who say to the wood, ‘Wake up!’ to silent stone, ‘Rouse yourself!’ Can it teach? See, it is plated with gold and silver, and there is no breath in it at all” (Hosea 13:2) A teacher of lies! A gold-gilded tower like that of Babel. Who can miss the implications? Jeremiah says “For it is a land of images, and they go mad over idols (Jeremiah 50:18). Who can deny the madness in a land where Christians now see fellow brothers and sisters as enemies and Americans talk openly of a new Civil War and violence – rhetorical and physical – dominates our lives.

How long will we hesitate between idols and Almighty God? When will the cry of Habakkuk become the cry of American Christians: “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing
and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.” When democracy is threatened by those who show disrespect for the rule of law, when members of Congress suggest that the president can disregard the Supreme Court, are we not thrust back into Habakkuk’s day?

With biting satire, Isaiah deconstructs idols and idol worshipers: “All who make idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit; their witnesses neither see nor know. And so they will be put to shame. Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? Look, all its devotees shall be put to shame; the artisans too are merely human. Let them all assemble, let them stand up; they shall be terrified, they shall all be put to shame (Isaiah 44:9 – 11).

Isaiah scorches the image makers with sarcasm. He makes fun of the blacksmith fashioning and working the idol over the coals, shaping, and forging it. The carpenter makes his idol in human form, with human beauty, to be set up in a shrine.

Isaiah says the image makers have deluded minds leading others astray. They are so blinded they can’t say, “Is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?”

Isaiah blacksmiths, carpenters, and sculptors are today’s they are advertisers, image makers, and political consultants. Our politicians seem to us like automatons connected to innumerable strings being pulled by consultants, speech writers, image makers, make-up artists, focus groups, media moguls, fundraisers, and ad nauseum. Images flood our minds and dictate our choices.

We are an image-laden people who live in the midst of millions of unfiltered images. Our lives flash by our faces indecipherable images that are designed to tell us how we feel, not to teach us to think critically or decide wisely. We are a land of idols, and we are idol worshipers. I will leave to your critical thinking to discern the greatest American idol.