Statues

It's been forever since I've posted. Recently racial violence has erupted in the US because White Southerners don't want statues honoring their Confederate ancestors to be removed. I understand they are grieving the loss of something that has been there for their whole lives. It's normal to grieve.

However, most of those White Southerners would also identify as Christians, and Christians are called to deny yourself, take up the cross, and follow Jesus. Grief and giving up your rights is one of the core attributes of a real Christian.

I wrote this on Facebook:

Statues.

I don't get how people who read the Bible can be such big proponents of saving statues.

The Old Testament is full of stories of the godly tearing down altars, shrines, and idols. A literal idol is a statue that represents a god or goddess. In the ancient world, a god or goddess was a representation of an ideal or a power.

Shrines are statues or memorials to an ancestor. (whether that ancestor is Hebrew, Egyptian, Chinese or Confederate).

Gideon got in trouble with the Baal-worshipers for tearing down a statue.

Aaron sinned when he built a statue.
Jeroboam sinned when he built statues.

The ungodly kings left the statues. The godly kings tore down the statues, and dealt with backlash from the people whose heritage was being offended.

Jewish people around the time of Jesus were so concerned with idolatry that they didn't even like the Olympics because of handing out little humanoid trophies.

Not all statues are bad--that is misunderstanding the goodness of the material world.

But, anytime you value a statue and what it stands for more than the vocation of humans to be shalom-makers, you're committing idolatry in the most literal way possible.


"Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles." Romans 1:22-23