The Bible As An Idol

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. 2 Timothy 3:16a

And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up. And Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God.
Then all the people answered, “Amen, Amen!” while lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground. Nehemiah 8:5-6

Occasionally on social media I’ve run across the idea that the Bible can become an idol to us. Now, I’ve never heard of anyone putting a Bible in front of the church and asking everyone to bow down to it. But of course, that is not what people mean when they make this accusation.

What people mean is that those who treat the Bible as infallible and authoritative are making an idol of it by putting it above God Himself.

Many people see the Bible as an important historical document, but one that is flawed because it was written by a bunch of men thousands of years ago. If that’s all it is, it should not be followed unquestioningly.

But for those of us who believe that every word of it has been directly inspired and preserved by God, we are not making an idol of it if we obey it. We believe it IS the word of God and so we follow it because that’s what you do with words from God, or a god, or really anyone whom you perceive has authority over you in any capacity.

The laws of men are fallible yet we still obey them. My boss when I was a waitress in high school wasn’t infallible, but I still obeyed her instructions when I was at work even if I didn’t want to. (And sometimes I didn’t. On slow nights she would have me clean toilets or window blinds.) But it wasn’t worship; as much as I respected her, I would not have obeyed her if she had tried to tell me what to do in my personal life or in matters of religion. That would have been silly. She didn’t have that amount of authority over me.

But God does. God has the right to tell me what to do in every aspect of my life. I believe the Bible to contain His instructions to me and so I consider it authoritative. That doesn’t make me a worshiper of the Bible. It makes me a worshiper of HIM.

If I take a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and fall down before it, I am making an idol of it. Furthermore if I were to take the writings of Charles Russell or Joseph Smith or even C.S. Lewis or John Piper and treat them as infallible and authoritative on their own merits, I would be making idols not of the writings but of the authors themselves.

If you don’t believe the Bible is an accurate record of what God has said, then why follow any of it? If there are parts you like, then follow them, I suppose. Throw out the parts that make you uncomfortable or offend you.

But Nehemiah chapter 8 shows the close connection between the worship of God and respect for His word. The people stood up for the reading of the word, and then bowed down to worship the One who had given the word. How could they worship Him if they didn’t respect the things He had said?

When you have a god, you obey whatever you understand that god to be telling you. So if you don’t accept the Bible completely, whose words do you accept completely? This will tell you who your god is. If you say that you are following Jesus and his words, I would ask: what about his words in Luke 10:16 and John 14:17? Jesus said his apostles’ words would come from the Holy Spirit of truth.

Is the Bible the product of “holy men of God [who] spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit,” (2 Peter 1:21)? Or has the written record of God’s words been corrupted by men? This is a question that we all need to investigate seriously and honestly. The answer will determine a great deal about what and how we worship.

Lean not on your own understanding.
Do not be wise in your own eyes. Proverbs 3:5b, 7a

Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. John 17:17

Dear Father in heaven, help me not to worship anything but You, and help me to accept Your authority in my life. Show me the way, I humbly beg, in Jesus’s name, Amen.

by Christie Cole Atkins