Idols on the Altar and Images in the Pulpit, part 1

This article is the result of my first serious consideration of the faltering of the Protestant Church. Re-reading it now, I realize how much the study of idolatry brought me to the emergent conversation today.

There’s so much I don’t know- so much I need to learn in order to expand the message and meaning of these ideas. The vastness of what I don’t know became so daunting, in fact, that I put the entire project away for quite some time. Not surprisingly it was my new church family here on the net who encouraged me to bring it back out. (Thanks, Rob. I think.)

I’ve done some editing on the periphery, but the ideas remain essentially the same as they were in 1998. I’ll post the article in several installments.

Idols on the Altar and Images in the Pulpit
by Cindy Bryan

Introduction

In the summer of 1994 my husband, Keith, and I began the process of building a house—contracting and doing much of the work ourselves. After almost a year of unending backaches and everything-else-aches, little to no sleep, and constant worry over sticking to the budget, we moved in.

It was June when we discovered the leak. We had nicked the kitchen drain pipe with a floor nail, and it had been slowly leaking for three months. The first sign of trouble was a warping hardwood floor. When the plumber discovered the source of the leak (read: ripped out the wall behind the sink), he said that the sheet-rock behind the cabinets was crumbly, and water was running down the wall beneath the house. (Note: I could go on and on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth that followed, but in deference to the greater message, I refrain.)

One morning soon afterwards, I woke from a vivid dream. My father and I were walking through his home, the house where I grew up. The walls and ceiling were crumbling and falling in due to an interior leak. The dream, clearly reminiscent of our situation, wasn't hard to imagine under the circumstances. But, as soon as I said aloud to Keith, "I dreamed that my father's house was falling down," I felt with intense clarity that the dream was really about my Heavenly Father's “house,” the Church.

Uncertain what to do in this unfamiliar territory, I began to pray earnestly for direction from God. Why would He give me such a dream? Was it really from Him? (I was still emotionally and physically exhausted, after all.) My request was answered with a stunning flash of two clear, but puzzling words. “Idols and images.”

I dove into a study that wholly consumed me for two years. I was haunted by a verse which repeatedly drew my attention:

"Say this to him, 'This is what the Lord says: I will overthrow what I have built and uproot what I have planted throughout the land'" (Jer. 45:4 NIV).

As a result of the two most intense years of my spiritual life thus far, I can say without hesitation that I believe that when God looks at the Church today (specifically the Church in the U.S.), most of our worship looks the same to Him as the idolatrous worship of Israel prior to exile. And, just as I was afraid that the plumbing leak would permanently damage my home, I am today fearful of the implications for the Church- that our walls are crumbling within, still just out of most people’s sight.