Starts With Ignorance - Ends With Idolatry

Israel has built many altars to take away sin, but these very altars became places for sinning! [Hosea 8.11]

This verse may very well be describing the powerless condition of the Church today.

When curses are ignored as such, and repentance is not incorporated at their onset, that in itself is one problem. It is another problem to create doctrines that justify curse's existence outside their intended purpose. It is yet another problem altogether to incorporate idols as solutions to these misinterpreted curses.

It all starts with ignorance and ends with idolatry.

In today's OYCB reading, Hosea writes:

My people are being destroyed because they don’t know me. Since you priests refuse to know me, I refuse to recognize you as my priests. Since you have forgotten the laws of your God, I will forget to bless your children. [Hosea 4.6]

Not knowing God is the first and root problem of not understanding curses (see a full description of curses in Deuteronomy 28.15-68). Curses were set in place to identify the presence of sin. No where in the Scriptures are curses utilized for any reason other than punishment. Even in the cases of Job's suffering and Paul's thorn in the flesh, both were conditions tied directly to the sin of pride. 

Next, failure then to properly identify curses necessitated an explanation for their existence. Enter here the doctrines of "suffering" and "why bad things happen to good people." While Job was required to repent for his pride and Paul was directed to humbly seek God's redeeming grace because of his pride, the Church, in contrast, instituted doctrines to justify the existence of curses rather than calling curse's recipients to repentance. The institution of these doctrines was born of pure pride.

And finally, here is where idols come into the picture. Because the Church failed to recognize God's call (through curses) to repentance, armed with the religious doctrines described above (God "allowing" suffering almost as if it is not entirely under His control), the Church sought (and still seeks today) remediation from the suffering elsewhere. This is where idolatry stealthily slips in unnoticed as man turns to the systems of the world: knowledge, finances and medicine for remedies God demanded His people turn only to Him for!

Think of it this way, if curses are not exclusive indicators of the presence of sin and therefore God's call to repentance, how can anyone be sure that Jesus' suffering on the Cross was not just a stroke of random bad luck? Think about that long and hard. Our salvation hinges entirely upon what happened on the Cross. If suffering is random, then there is no way to estimate the value and effect of Jesus' suffering on our behalf.

The Church's failure in these three points has made their "many altars to take away sin" effectually instead, "places for sinning." 

May the truth and revelation of God's Word increase our knowledge of God and keep us from idolatry!

Father, I understand that ignorance of Who You Are is the foundation for idolatry. Help us seek to know You as our number one priority. And, as we do, help us to rightly comprehend and believe all that Jesus accomplished on the Cross on our behalf. So be it.