“Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths,

but they speak not; eyes have they but they see not.”

(Psalm 115: 4-5)

Is there a place for laughter in the liturgy of the church? How fitting is snickering sarcasm in the sanctuary? The inspired composer of the 115^th Psalm evidently thought that humorous jibes have their place even in worship. For this Psalm, obviously designed for responsive reading and singing in the temple worship, makes all manner of fun of the worship of idols.

“Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands,” jokes the poet. “They have mouths but they speak not; eyes have they but they see not; ears have they but they hear not; feet have they but they walk not.”

For this ridicule in the midst of worship, the Psalmist has respectable prophetic precedent. Jeremiah had said that “Idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber patch,” and the same prophet laughs uproariously at “a god that has to be carried.” Isaiah snickers behind his hand at the senseless folly of the idol maker who fells a tree, cuts off a part of the trunk to kindle a fire, warms himself, cooks bread on the fire, and then, from the residue of the tree trunk fashions with his own hands an image in his own likeness and falls down and worships it imploring: “Save me, deliver me!”

There are many ridiculous things about idols the scriptures point out, one of which is their powerlessness. They cannot walk or move, or come to one’s rescue. They have to be carried. Another ridiculous thing about idols is their insensitiveness. They hear not and see not. They do not perceive what is going on, even so much as the man who made them. Yet another ridiculously pathetic thing about idols is their inability to satisfy man’s needs. As creatures of man’s own hands, they can bring to the tragic human situation nothing more than man himself has put into them.

But because Israel was ever subject to the temptation of falling into the follies of her idolatrous neighbors, idol worship had to be dealt with decisively by her religious leaders. What could be done to destroy idolatry?

Elijah tried force. He slew the prophets of Baal, smashed their images and tore down their shrines and altars, but that did not get rid of Baal worship. Elijah just succeeded in making a few martyrs out of false prophets and priests, sufficient to stir up the spirit of a bold woman who put Elijah on the run.

Finally, Israel’s religious leaders must have reached the conclusion that the best way to deal with these fake deities was to laugh them out of existence, to poke fun at such irrational religion. C. S. Lewis, you know, says that the one thing that the devil can’t stand is to be laughed at. So, right into the sacred ceremony of the sanctuary there is brought this sarcastic snicker at idols. It was Israel’s most effective way to purify popular religion and give glory to the one true God.

How wise were the ancient Hebrews! How needed is some well placed sarcasm in the sanctuaries of our churches today! For one of the powers of modern idolatry is that it is not recognized as such. No one has branded it. No one has scorned it with the sarcasm it deserves. We have thought of ourselves as liberated long ago from idolatry. We make no images of stone or gold or wood and prostrate ourselves before them. Hence all Biblical passages on idolatry, its curse and folly, are passé, as far as we are concerned. So we delude ourselves.

For anything that takes the place of Almighty God in the area of our supreme trust and devotion is an idol. Whether taking a visible and tangible form or not, it is a false deity which we are worshiping. See some of the idols before which this generation is prostrating itself.

Some of the most astute students of Marxian Communism see its ultimate evil not in its atheism but in its idolatry. What is it that makes communism so despicable and dreaded a force in the world today? Why, the fact that it is a modern idolatry!

John Hutchison writes: “the center of the conflict lies not in communism’s atheism, but in its idolatry. Its professed atheism serves simply to deprive its adherents of any inhibitions against the sort of total or absolute allegiance which they give to their cause.” (The Two Cities — p. 148)

John Coleman Bennett in his Christianity and Communism says: “The great fault of communism is not its theoretical atheism, but its practical idolatry.” (p. 50) The thorough going communist puts his supreme trust in the communist theory of history, thus displacing the Lord God Almighty in human hearts.

How horrible are the communist idolaters! But how much less despicable are we when we make our own darling human system the supreme reality in which we trust and to which we give our supreme allegiance, be it the “cause of capitalism,” or “the private enterprise system,” or “the American way of life”? Anything, however good it may be in our own or other’s eyes, which has first place in our lives above Almighty God is an idol. Let’s face it. And we shall never emerge victorious from our present struggle with communism so long as we combat one idolatry with another.

But there is a whole family of popular idols bearing the general name of “secularism” at whose shrine modern man (including many church-goers) regularly worship. Secularism is a way of life and thought and devotion which is dedicated to the proposition that the primary interests in life center in the affairs and concerns of the world of time and space and matter. Secularism has many man-made idols.

One in this secularism family of idols bears the name of “Security” — man-made and man-manipulated security. Like the builders of Babel long ago, this generation has spit on its hands and said: “Go to, we will build us a tower which will reach to the skies — a tower of man-wrought security without recourse to that thoroughly unreliable and unpredictable redoubt of superstitious minds called ‘trust in God’.”

And what is the result? The more men become obsessed with plans and schemes for their own security, the longer we worship at security’s shrine, the less secure we feel. Dorothy Thompson observed some time ago that “the passion for security in America is undermining character. The passion for personal security is predominant over intellectual conviction, moral principle, and hence freedom. ‘I must think of my family,’ ‘Why stick my neck out?’ are the current rationalizations for cowardice or indifference. Once every free mind and spirit knew that there is no freedom, national or personal, without risk; that to hold an opinion has often been incompatible with holding a job; that the survival of civilizations depends, not on technological achievements or economic power, but on the wisdom of their judgments, and the strength of their moral and intellectual characters. The Greeks were right and history has supported them when they declared that ‘character is destiny.’ What then becomes of security if character fails?”

In all our armament race of today for national security’s sake, cannot we remember Kipling’s well placed scorn on those who put their trust in reeking tube and iron shard instead of the “God of our Fathers beneath whose awful hand we hold dominion over palm and pine?”

Have we forgotten that the signers of the Declaration of Independence worshiped no tin God “Security” but, committing their lives and fortunes to the imperishable spiritual principles of our revealed religion, signed their names to that majestic document that scorned tyranny, knowing that they might be signing their own death warrant, and concluded in these brave and reverent words: “For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

Another idol in the pantheon of secularism is “Sex” — S E X. I think it was Reinhold Niebuhr who once defined idolatry as the taking of anything given by God for man’s use and God’s glory, and raising it to the place of supreme value and adoration; in effect setting it at the center of life in God’s place.

Sex — the physical, psychological, and spiritual differences and attractions between the male and female of the race — one of the great facts of existence — is a reality created by God for His purposes of procreation of the race, for the nurture and education of the young, for ministering to the comfort and companionship of immortal souls on their earthly pilgrimage; but to take sex and make it the center and obsession of life is to put it in the place of God and worship it as an idol, just as surely as did the ancient Ephesians in their obscene ritual with temple prostitutes in the Temple of Diana, goddess of fertility. Sex is an area of life, neither good nor evil in itself, but capable of degradation or exaltation according as it is either dedicated to God or debased to the devil.

Yet another familiar idol in the popular pantheon of modern man’s temple to the secularization of life is “Society.” Oh, the measure of man’s devotion to and labors for what is acceptable in the sight of polite custom! Here is a god whose disfavor man fears more than hell itself and whose pronouncements proscribe his daily labors and whose price tags claim the expenditure of his last penny.

“This was your sister Sodom’s sin,” said the prophet Ezekiel, “she lived in pride, plenty, and careless ease.” Here is an idolatrous trinity not of heaven, but of hell — the trinity of modern American society: “Pride, Plenty, and Careless Ease.”

Perhaps a “saving sense of humor” is what we need now more than anything else to deliver us from our deadly idolatry of secularism in all its forms! Oh, to be able to set forth for all to see, even in God’s sanctuary, the silly folly of our trust in and thirst for all these things which are short of, and antagonistic to, the Eternal God! Oh, to be able to strip from our souls the mask of deadly deception and laugh to scorn our ridiculous pose of puny man making with our own hands and minds our darling idols to worship and give ourselves to, substituting them for the life-giving, ennobling, empowering relationship which every soul could have with the Eternal!

The Psalmist says that the tragedy that stands at the opposite pole to the ridiculous in idol worship is the fact that eventually the idolater becomes like the object of his devotion: “They that make them are like them; so is every one that trusteth in them.” (Psalm 115:8) Idols are powerless, says the Psalmist, save in this one regard — to make the man who worships one, like the idol itself into a powerless, empty creature, who has to be carried, who having ears and eyes perceives not.

Idolaters are not perceptive to what God is doing in history. They don’t know their way round. They can’t see the moral and ethical scoreboard on which the Eternal is marking up, inning by inning, the score in the great human contest. The imperishable fact of Hebraic prophecy is that these chosen men of God who worshipped and served Him knew and proclaimed what God was doing in history and showed others the way God was going. By pitiable contrast it has been demonstrated over and over that men and nations who worshipped him not and chose for themselves other objects of devotion became as empty and insensitive as their puny idols. Historians speak of how the noble Roman became effeminate and dull when he worshipped pride, plenty, and careless ease. Visitors to the cafes of modern Paris hear only scornful jibes at the spiritual values which once made France great — “Liberty, Egalite, Fraternite.”

Rufus Jones says that the “great experts who know from the inside what religion is always make much of its dynamic power, its energizing and propulsive power. Power is a word used often on the lips of Jesus.”

And the most pathetically ridiculous result of idolatry in all its forms is that it entices us away from the source of all spiritual power and reliable understanding to leave us as empty and impotent as the false thing we worshipped.

“But the same principle which degrades the idolater lifts the Christian to the likeness of Christ. The aim and effect of adoration is assimilation.” (A Macluaren) Eddie Cantor said that when he was a boy of 12 he worked hard for weeks, running errands for the family and the neighbors until he had saved $2.50. Then he bought a ticket and went to see George M. Cohan in Mr. New York. “When I heard George M. Cohan sing Give My Regards to Ole Broadway, said Eddie Cantor, “from that moment I knew there could be no other life but Old Broadway for me.” And so it has been. We grow into the likeness of what we worship. This is the truth in the fable of Midas.

The effect of adoration is assimilation.” And if Jesus Christ is the one who is given the focus of your attention, if He becomes the center of your heart’s affection, then you will become like Him. “He became what we are,” said Jacob Boehme, “in order that we might become what He is.”

It is not to a dumb idol, that your soul and mine is called — nor to an old impersonal written record — nor even to a vague mysterious dread — but to a living spirit, creator of the world, with a father’s heart and a father’s wise goodness — to God revealed in Jesus Christ. Will you come to Him?