Why The Temple Is The Best Place To Hide An Idol

When it came to idolatry in the Old Testament, the people of God were pretty crass. We read in horror of the vision in Ezekiel 8 in which the syncretism of Israel resulted in the figures of Canaanite gods being placed inside God’s holy house.

As you read the chapter you soon realise that no matter the vantage point in the temple, idolatry is going on. Even from the temple itself the people direct themselves away from worship of God towards the sun – a created thing. They have literally turned their backs on God.

Now it took a vision in the Spirit for Ezekiel to see this. Why? Because idolatry is easy to hide in the temple. The simplest way to foster idolatry is to smuggle it into the place of worship.  The slyest manner in which to promote worldliness is to parasitically attach it to the worship of the one true God.

That’s why when I walk past a liberal church down the street from where I live, that is known for rolling over on the Sexular Age  it has this statement on its welcome board:

God creates diversity: Humans force binaries.

Clearly hasn’t read Genesis 1-2. Or more likely if they have, they have dismissed it.  A clear demonstration that the authority of Scripture – or the rejection of it – is what leads to heterodox ethics.

But let’s not bag out the liberals. I’m once again reading through Paul Tripp’s excellent book Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church, and I was struck by these words in his chapter on Character:

“A [ministry] leader whose heart has been captured by other things doesn’t forsake ministry to pursue other things; he uses ministry position, power, authority and trust to get those things.”

Boom!

In other words, the easiest place to hide an idol, just as in Ezekiel’s day, is in the temple. The place of worship can become a place of false worship, and people may be none the wiser. It may take a spiritual insight of the level of Ezekiel’s to uncover it.

Now leaving aside the fact that the church building is NOT the temple, it nevertheless stands, that the issue Ezekiel was dealing with is our issue today. And Paul Tripp nails it.

It’s super easy as evangelicals from the reformed tradition to tut-tut about the obvious idolatry of the liberal church I just mentioned.

But in my experience, the most damage done to ministries and to other ministry participants, is from leaders who do exactly what Tripp says.

And of course there are spectacular big, bad examples that we can all name and shame. But for every one of those there are myriad unhappy, untrustworthy ministry leaders who hide their idolatries within the temple, because it’s the one place no one thinks to look.

So I’ve seen terrible leaders who shred others, use position for their own gain, who privately destroy the lives of ministry colleagues, whose insecurities lead them to say and do things that they would – and do – preach and write against. And it’s easy to hide that idolatry with all that worship going on around it.

Forsaking ministry to go and play out your ungodliness in obvious ways? Ain’t nobody got time for that!  Besides, when the pay is okay and there’s a house to go with it, and a bunch of people to utilise to your own ends? I mean, where else in the world would you get liberty to do that with the fairly narrow skills set you have been given?

It seems to me that not enough questions are asked of candidates for ministry in this area. And then once in ministry it seems that NO questions are asked. Until of course it all falls apart.

Or until of course it doesn’t fall apart – on the surface at least – because those people are protected by either a compliant system or a leadership group that itself doesn’t have the confidence or character to call it out.

That in itself is a dangerous place to be.  Because God knows. And God let Ezekiel know that he knew. If Tripp is right, and sadly I think he is right, then we must allow ourselves to be as deeply searched by God as Ezekiel’s vision of the temple was.

Not just the outer courts, but the very inner courts of our ministry, our ministry philosophy and practice, and our own hearts.

Paul Tripp concludes his paragraph with this:

Every leadership community needs to understand that ministry can be the vehicle for pursuing a whole host of idolatries. In this way, ministry leadership is war, and we cannot approach it with the passivity of peacetime assumption.

Or as St Peter says to the church:

Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. (1 Peter 2:11).

Ministry leaders, make sure you are not proclaiming that message to your people as they live life “out there”, if at the same time you are fostering such sinful desires – the sophisticated idols Tripp mentions – within the temple.