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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Satan is a liar and goes about seeking to deceive us all. And plenty of folks, including those fully into the New Age Movement and the like are fully ensnared by the enemy. Moreover, when it comes to syncretism (trying to combine and merge different religions and claim they all are equally true and can be happily amalgamated), the Christian should know what to do.

Deception exists. The problem is, those most likely to be deceived are those who don’t think deception exists – or that they are immune from it. And much of the population susceptible to deception are those who are into relativism, subjectivism, and emotivism – in other words, most modern secular folks!
If they deny that objective absolute truth exists, then they will toy with anything and everything that fits their fancy. But the notion of truth of course means that some things are not true – some things are false. When you buy into a worldview that says that truth is relative and happens to be whatever you think it is, then it is hard to say that some things are false, or wrong. So anything goes.
Nonetheless, those most into such relativism can still get quite upset if you dare to suggest they might be wrong. They can go on all day about how open they are and how tolerant they are, but as soon as you seek to share truth with them, they can get very ornery – and very intolerant.
Many of those into New Age mumbo jumbo and Eastern thought especially fit the bill here. And I recently had another very good example of this taking place. It had to do with something I had shared on the social media from the American Christian “activist mommy” Elizabeth Johnson.
She had posted a video interview she did with a former witch. I tagged a friend of mine who was also once involved in witchcraft since she would likely be interested in seeing it. The interview in question is found here: www.facebook.com/watch/?v=396653095561900
But a friend of hers – but not of mine – came along and started carrying on about how witchcraft and Christianity get along just swimmingly. She actually said this:
Why can’t witchcraft and Christianity go hand in hand? Why is it evil to be a witch? I am proud to call myself a witch. I love Jesus Christ and God/dess, and I also love to garden, I see magic everywhere, I acknowledge the spells I speak with every word, I love tarot, and honour natures rhythms, I adore astrology and I love practicing rituals for growth and love and harmony for all beings… I don’t understand why these two beautiful philosophies are so often opposing each other when it’s so clear to me they are really one at heart. If anyone can explain I am all ears.
Needless to say my friend and I both challenged her on this. We assured her that the two are NOT compatible. My friend spoke of her testimony: www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4pqnUfgZJQ
And I urged the gal to look at this article for more detail on these matters: billmuehlenberg.com/2022/01/09/a-closer-look-at-witchcraft/
But it seems she was not interested in what either of us had to say, and she did not even seem to bother looking at the links we shared with her. She kept posting loony stuff instead. For example she posted one meme saying “All religions are based on astrotheology” I said: “Um no, not even close.”
Her reply to me and other was often the following: “Haha. Blessings!” As if she was so loving and accepting and nice and we were somehow the bad guys here. Others challenged her as well, and then her true colours started coming to the fore. She made a few replies then took her ball and ran away.
She said to one Christian: “wow so rude! Everyone is allowed to have their own perspective – in the end that’s all that’s going on – nothing is objective. Despite your rudeness! I wish you nothing but blessings and peace.” And to another she said: “I’ve sourced information from all over the place, but ultimately I make decisions about my beliefs from within. I will be withdrawing from any contact with you and all your friends.”
As I say, with those words she pulled out. 
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A myriad of apps offers sophisticated AI conversational models that give lonely users a relationship with a pixel model: a perfect companion who is patient, kind, bears all things, believes all things, and doesn’t expect any of the same virtue in return. The great sin of Babel was that they wanted to be like God. While the ancients made a tower to climb to heaven, the modern man descends into his basement and plays the creator as he fashions a pseudo-helper to sedate his lust.

Artificial Intelligence is well on its way to becoming a trillion-dollar industry and has been disrupting sectors from agriculture to finance across the world. The pornography industry is no exception. Sophisticated AI engines can use text prompts to create realistic, fully animated scenes in minutes, and that technology is being used to generate terabytes of new pornography. Deepfake technology can change one person’s face to another or even digitally take the clothes off of a person.[1] Several new companies are using AI to manufacture personalized sex toys. The list goes on.
For Christians, these dizzying changes simply add dimensions to an industry we already recognize as depraved. However, others argue that there are some ethical upsides to AI porn: more computer-generated people mean fewer real ones in an industry fraught with abuse.[2] Even Christians may be tempted to think, “If there’s no person on the other side of the screen, is it really sinful?” I will offer two arguments for why AI porn is every bit as sinful as yesterday’s porn and far more dangerous. But before giving these reasons, allow me to offer a brief theology of sex to show why pornography is such a distortion of God’s good design.
Genesis 101: God’s Design for Sex
The consequentialist ethic asks, “Who does it hurt?” The biblical ethic asks, “What is it for?” The main New Testament texts that speak to sexual ethics are consistently grounded in God’s creational design (Matt. 19:3–12, 1 Cor. 6:12–20, Eph. 5:29–32, 1 Tim. 2:11–14, 1 Cor. 11:7–12), and if Christians want to mount a vigorous critique of pornography, we must develop a robust biblical theology of sex. As we follow the biblical authors in anchoring our theology in the first two chapters of Genesis, we can construct an ethical framework to understand AI pornography. God designed sex for Covenant unity, procreation, and expression of love.[3]
Covenantal Unity
God designed sex for covenantal unity between husband and wife, a unity that is emotional, spiritual, and sexual—the two “shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). God intended the covenant of marriage to image the even greater New Covenant he established with his people, which is why Paul severely reprimands members of the church in Corinth for sleeping with prostitutes. He tells them, “Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, ‘The two will become one flesh’[Gen. 2:24]. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor. 6:16–17). Sex is crucial to covenantal unity. Paul makes this point again in his letter to Ephesus when he shows how the husband and wife relationship is a picture of the unity between Christ and the church (Eph. 5:25–33). In both chapters Paul quotes Genesis 2:24, because his inspired understanding of biblical sexuality is grounded in the pre-fall creational design.
Porn mocks covenantal unity by allowing users to voyeur through endless images till one meets their fantasy. Porn recoils from relational commitment in marriage, which takes genuine effort, understanding, compassion, and empathy. Instead, porn offers an easy and unholy union that only lasts as long as a computer tab stays open. While the beautiful union of husband and wife naturally leads to new life, porn has no thought for the next generation.
Procreation
God designed sex for procreation. He told our first parents, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). The sexual revolution and the ubiquity of birth control have elevated a shallow “love” to the highest ideal in sex, resulting in a cultural amnesia to the fact that sex makes babies.[4] Procreation is not incidental but core to the very purpose of sex. The Bible consistently proclaims children to be a blessing from the Lord. (Deut. 28:4; Prov. 17:6; Ruth 4:11; Pss. 127:3–5; 128:3-4). One of the reasons God hates infidelity is because sex inside a covenantal marriage is supposed to lead to children (Mal. 2:15).
Procreation provides the logical basis for nearly every sexual prohibition in the bible. Monogamy and exclusivity are crucial because of the teamwork needed to raise children to adulthood.[5]
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