Written by Andrew T. Walker |
Wednesday, May 15, 2024

America is waking up to the fact that most of American higher education is an enemy of American ideals. In a sane world, the government would establish a commission to study the ideological capture of institutions like a Columbia. But this is the constituency Democrats need to win elections, so that will never happen.

In recent months, I was invited to speak at a law school on the subject of religious liberty. My host—a progressive, but an old-school free-speech progressive—warned me: “It’s up to you, but I would stay away from anything related to LGBT issues or Israel. I’ll be frank with you: If you bring those issues up, a group of ultra-woke students will go insane.”
I appreciated the warning, genuinely. I did not intend to bring those issues up, but knowing what could happen if I did was helpful. Nonetheless, it was mystifying to receive a warning of this type. I could never envision telling a guest speaker who did not share my students’ views to be prepared for an intellectual tantrum.
I raise this episode alongside the ongoing story playing out at our nation’s most elite institutions surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict. What is playing out across America’s most prestigious universities (and fanning out to many other universities in general) is morally deplorable and deserving of the highest condemnation. In what can be described as reminiscent of events from 1930s Germany, students at these universities are taunting, harassing, and invoking genocidal language against Jews. Faculty are, of course, aiding and abetting this foolishness. Defenses of Hamas are made. Behold the product of a generational effort to mainstream Critical Social Justice.
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It is to be expected that wickedness will often attempt to tarnish God’s good works, working to extinguish the light of the Gospel. But evidence of some perversion did not, and could not, destroy the whole. Revival is the work of God and must be judged by the whole, according to Scripture, distinguishing good from evil. Let us, like Edwards, judge rightly and earnestly pray for religious revival in our own day.

The Great Awakening of the mid-eighteenth century provoked the ire of many Protestants. This was due to reports of hysteria surrounding the Awakening’s particular brand of revivalism. Many did not know what to make of the excitement and fervor exuded by those caught-up in the movement.
In New England, the relatively unassuming Jonathan Edwards found himself at the center of debates concerning the revival’s legitimacy. He was friends with men like George Whitefield who (his opponents believed) had a certain degree of pageantry while preaching that played on the emotions of listeners to manipulate and coerce various responses. This emotional style of preaching had evidently been taken up by other preachers in Edwards’ day, adding fuel to the fiery distrust of many.
While Edwards was not particularly known for any sort of flamboyance in his preaching, he had special interest in the events taking place and had experienced some of the religious fervor firsthand. His most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” was met with a shocking response when he preached it in 1741 for a second time in the town of Enfield. Edwards could not finish the sermon because the congregation erupted in a flurry of emotions. Many came to saving faith that day.[1]
A Definition of Revival and the Need to Judge Rightly
Iain H. Murray helpfully defined revival as: “A sovereign and large giving of the Spirit of God, resulting in the addition of many to the kingdom of God.”[2] Just as in Edwards’ time, many today are right to distrust the supposed “revival services” offered by some churches.[3] Just as no mortal can produce salvation in another, neither can a preacher or church produce legitimate revival apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. Just as the salvation of the sinner cannot be scheduled or planned, neither can revival. As Jesus taught, “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit” (Jn. 3:8). It is God’s sovereign work to save and revive, and no amount of scheduling, planning, or blue-faced preaching can accomplish what only God sovereignly can.
Edwards wrote Some Thoughts on the Present Revival because he saw three ways to judge the legitimacy of an apparent spiritual awakening. He explained that many had erred in their judgments of the revival:
“First, In judging of this work a priori. Secondly, In not taking the Holy Scriptures as a whole rule whereby to judge of such operations. Thirdly, In not justly separating and distinguishing the good from the bad.”[4]
The First Judgment
First, Edwards warned against judging the apparent revival a priori because the way something began would necessarily be the way something ended. Just as a prophet was to be judged based on whether the prophecy came to fruition (Deut. 18:22), an apparent revival could only be truly understood as a whole. Edwards explained, “We are to observe the effect wrought; and if, upon examination of that, it be found to be agreeable to the word of God, we are bound to rest in it as God’s work…”[5]
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When we imagine God differently than how Scripture describes Him, we are actually forging an idol in our minds.  Idolatry begins in our minds when we exchange the truth of God for our own “truth”: “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:22-23).

The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”John 4:19-24, ESV
Last time, I argued that the Catholic practice or praying to Mary is idolatry.  Improper worship abounds in Protestant churches too, enough that the god who is worshipped in many American churches today is not the God of the Bible, so the Jesus whose coming we celebrate in this Advent season would be unwelcome in many American churches.  This post will look at that prevalent form of idolatry—the worship of the god of our imagination rather than God as revealed in Scripture—which is much worse than praying to Mary.
American Idolatry
Before looking at the specific idol in question, we need to a refresher on idolatry.  We commit idolatry when we put anyone or anything in place of God, including a mental image of God that does not align with Scripture.  As a result, we are constantly at risk of creating new idols:
Hence we may infer, that the human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols….The human mind, stuffed as it is with presumptuous rashness, dares to imagine a god suited to its own capacity; as it labours under dullness, nay, is sunk in the grossest ignorance, it substitutes vanity and an empty phantom in the place of God. To these evils another is added. The god whom man has thus conceived inwardly he attempts to embody outwardly.John Calvin trans. by Henry Beveridge, Institutes of the Christian Religion III, 1845 (orig. 1581): chapter 11, paragraph 8.
When we imagine God differently than how Scripture describes Him, we are actually forging an idol in our minds.  Idolatry begins in our minds when we exchange the truth of God for our own “truth”: “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:22-23).  Because of this exchange, God gives people over to various dishonorable passions, most notably homosexuality (Romans 1:26-27).  When people abandon the fundamentally-different God in exchange for gods resembling themselves, is it any wonder that they proceed to abandon the fundamentally-different opposite sex in exchange for what is the same?
That is exactly what many American churches have done.  They have abandoned the God of the Bible in exchange for a god that was created in the mind of man and resembles man.  When discussing theological illiteracy, we saw that many have erroneous views of God.  Contrary to Scripture they think that He makes mistakes, changes, and is largely absent.  They deny Jesus’s divinity and see the Holy Spirit as an impersonal force.  And since many believe that our God is the same as the god of the non-Messianic Jews and Muslims, they think He accepts any and all worship.  As a result, they teach an overly-simplistic version of God: that God is love—and not much else.  They have no concept of His holiness, righteousness, justice, and wrath.  As a result, many people view God as the harmless and lovable grandpa who could never hurt a fly, much less condemn anyone to hell.  This modern false god is safe and easy to approach, which is just as idolatrous as the opposing view we discussed last time: that God is unapproachable.  But that weakness makes this god very unsafe, for a harmless god is a worthless shelter.  Only the true God who is omnipotent, holy, just, jealous, and wrathful can give us true comfort and shelter.  For believers, all of God’s attributes work in our favor, so Christianity would be worthless without them.  The defanged god of the American church is worthless: he is no god at all, so there is no reason to fear him. Unsurprisingly then, there is no fear of God in most American churches.  And since the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom (Proverbs 1:7, 9:10), many churches have succumbed to folly.
The modern view of Jesus is similarly worthless, lacking any semblance of power.  As we discussed recently, the church at large (like society) has become very effeminate, so the resulting depiction of Jesus has become effeminate as well: a hippy with fair complexion, long hair, and soft clothing.  In many “worship” songs, Jesus is portrayed as the doting boyfriend.  As a result, it is often difficult to differentiate worship songs from pop love songs, especially with lyrics involving sloppy wet kisses.[1]  Many misunderstand “gentle Jesus meek and mild”, forgetting that gentle doesn’t mean docile and meekness means immense strength restrained by self-control—i.e., ideal masculinity.  Most people couldn’t imagine Jesus with a sword (Matthew 10:34) and a robe bloody from trampling His enemies (Revelation 14:19-20, 19:15 cf. Isaiah 63:3).  They would be appalled to know that it was the pre-incarnate Christ (the Angel of the LORD) who annihilated 185,000 Assyrian soldiers (2 Kings 19:35, Isaiah 37:36).  But that is exactly what Scripture says about Jesus Christ, so if you cannot imagine Jesus ruling the nations with an iron fist (Revelation 12:5 cf. Psalm 2:9), you are worshipping an idol erroneously called “Jesus”.  Churches that teach these things are committing idolatry and leading their people to commit idolatry.  They have exchanged the distinctiveness of God for the sameness of a god made in their own image (Romans 1:24-27).  Just as the lack of commitment to the local church could be considered spiritual adultery, worship in many American churches could be considered spiritual homosexuality.  Since none who unrepentantly practice homosexuality will enter heaven (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Ephesians 5:5), those who practice this spiritual homosexuality shouldn’t expect to enter heaven either. But this is nothing new.
Golden Calves and High Places
In many ways, the church’s idolatrous false god made in man’s image is a modern golden calf.  In Exodus 32, as Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving the Law from God, his brother Aaron made a golden calf for the people to worship.  Bearing some resemblance to the true God, the calf is credited with rescuing them from Egypt (Exodus 32:4) and given the sacred name of God (Exodus 32:5), so this was an attempt to worship the true God.  But being uniformed by the truth of who God is, the calf ended up reflecting some attributes of God but many attributes borrowed from pagan gods.  As punishment for this idolatry, Moses obliterated the idol and the Levites slaughtered three thousand of the idolaters (Exodus 32:20,28-29).
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