What is anthropolatry?

"Wherefore also God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness to dishonour their bodies among them [-selves], who changed the truth of God for falsehood and venerated and served the creature more than the Creator who is blessed for ever, Amen." (Ver. 24, 25.) If the soul abandons the truth of God, all is wrong, whatever appearances may say for the present. This was the great falsehood. Not to be in dependence and obedience is to be false to the relationship of a creature. Yet is there a step still farther down in evil, — the giving to the creature the honour that belongs to God only. It is exactly, and in this order, what Satan did, who was a liar from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, for there was no truth in him. Fallen man does his own will and is simply thus the slave of Satan. It may be in lusts, or in a religion of his own imagination, the one evidently degrading him, the other promising to elevate. But in truth it is Satan's, not God's promise, and is the full absolute lie which seals him up in all moral degradation not only for mind but for the body also. Such was heathenism, from which Judaism was powerless to deliver man, though a witness against his state. For God as yet dwelt behind a veil, and if at times He disclosed His way without a veil, it was but angelically, which is only a healing testimony to the sin-sick and not the quickening power needed by man, by all dead in trespasses and sin. (Comp. John 5.) God revealed in Christ, and this in eternal life as well as redemption, alone meets the case. Such is Christianity as now brought home and enjoyed in the power of the Holy Ghost, who accordingly puts more abundant honour on our uncomely parts and for the first time develops the vast importance of the body in God's service. See Romans 6, 12; 1 Corinthians 6, 15; 2 Corinthians 5, etc.

But man has been given up: God has given him up “to uncleanness” (v. 24) and “unto vile affections” (v. 26) because by determined rejection of God's testimonies in creation, he has “changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forevermore.” Man may dare to think he is merely neutral, merely uninterested concerning God, but this very attitude is an accusation of falsehood against God. For if the testimony of God is true, then neutrality is an utter impossibility. Neutrality is a deliberate (though it may be silent) rejection of the truth of God — dealing with it as with a lie. Speak of neutrality a man may, with utmost pride and complacency; but if he does not worship the Creator, then he does, in some way or other, worship the creature, though that creature be himself.

Let us consider the unclean thing as scripture treats it. The deluge left mankind with the strongest impression of the living God's hand. But they soon ceased to glorify Him as God and were unthankful. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and, changing the truth of God into falsehood, they worshipped the creature more than the Creator Who is blessed for ever. Amen. When idolatry began, or by whom is not said, but that Terah and his sons were involved in it. Now in 1 Cor. 10:20 the apostle, citing Deut. 32:17, pronounces on what it really is, though the form may differ. The worship of the heavens and all its host, of the earth and the sea and their denizens, the serpent especially, or again of heroes and departed ancestors, or of fabulous beings and their images, soon laid hold of men's imagination, not only to shut out God but to debase their votaries to the uttermost. And no wonder. For both O.T. and New, as we have seen, declare that what they sacrificed they sacrificed to demons, not to God. Demons were in effect behind the idols. If the idols were nothing in themselves, the demons were an awful reality of subtle and malignant evil to the ruin of such as paid the idols reverence.

[04 1862 064] The divine attributes have been made the basis of idolatry. Men embodied the attributes and left God out. So Scripture history was perverted, as the ark of Noah and his three sons; or earlier still, the serpent, woman, and tree; in nature, the sun, moon, and stars — in short, the creature, generally, served more than the Creator.

Spite of all this, what was it, in fact, that Egypt every-where worshiped? Emphatically and universally, the creature, and not the Creator. Egypt, which testified of the true God, took up every thing which was His total opposite, and deified a hundred bestial objects, and debased its worshipers thus below the beasts.

Their worship was a deification really, however, — as all heathen worship is, — of their own lusts and passions; and these are what every where naturally control man. The bait in Eden was, "Ye shall be as God;" and man has found that true in an awful way. He is become his own god; as the apostle says of some, even professing Christians, Their "god is their belly." The craving in man's heart for satisfaction not being met in God, lust and care devour him; he worships himself in a way which tends evermore to what is brutalizing and degrading.

The blow that fell upon the Nile destroyed its fish, and amongst these some of the emblems of the gods were to be found; for worship was paid to different kinds of fish. We must not think that the worship of emblems is unmeaning ignorance. The most sacred of the fish were dedicated to the goddess Hathor. Each fish selected for worship figured some special quality. The Wise men of Egypt did not worship a mere fish, but what the particular fish symbolized. Those who prostrate themselves before an image or a picture, primarily worship, not the representation, but that which is represented. They worship him or her whose likeness is before their eyes; and not infrequently such worshippers see the likeness move its eyes, or behold its lips smile, and then the idol becomes to them a veritable god. Now, though Egypt had no command of God not to make any image or likeness of any object whatever, in order to fall down before it and to give it reverence, Egypt had "changed the truth of God," which it once knew, "into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen."

The religion of Egypt was remarkable. They had a religion in which were embalmed the relics of another religion, the dead tradition of a life that had been. It is remarkable that the very expression which God employs when He tells Moses His name, "I am that I am," is attributed to God in the monuments of Egypt. Yet, with all that, what did Egypt worship? Emphatically, and universally, the creature — not the Creator. Egypt, which testified of the true God, took up everything that was His total opposite, and deified a hundred bestial objects — the images of their own lusts, debasing themselves by the service of these!

Their worship was a deification — as all heathen worship is — of their own lusts and passions. That is everywhere what controls man naturally. In the garden of Eden, Satan said to the woman, "Ye shall be as gods." It was the bait he presented to her: and man has sought after this ever since. There is a craving in man's heart for what will satisfy; and not being able to find satisfaction in God, not able to trust God's love and care, lust and care devour him. He worships himself, in a way continually more and more brutalizing and degrading.

The Comtean worship reveals more than this (for in truth it is humanity that man, fallen away from God, everywhere worships. He may invest this with more or less of the attributes of deity: because he is not a being groping his way out of native darkness, as so many would persuade us; the inspired version of heathenism is more honoring to God, if more condemnatory of the creature, that "when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." They had not to invent God, but rather to invent the god that they desired; and the god that they desired was one like themselves, a being who could sympathize with the lusts and passions of a corrupt nature. Hence "professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the image of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man."

Higher they could not go; but they could go lower. In the creatures below man they could find represented the lower instincts, cravings, appetites of man, with no check of conscience or morality. In the beast there is an unmoral nature, which may appear to sanction what in man is immoral. Thus came in the bestial gods of Egypt and elsewhere: "birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things" (Rom. 1:23), became to them the images of the divine glory; and the infinite degradation degraded more and more the worshipers: they were assimilated to what they worshiped, and received back in divine government "that recompense of their error that was meet." The imagination of man was employed to throw a halo around what was utterly abominable. Taught by the sacred lips of parents, maintained by law, becoming more venerable continually with the passing of generations, conscience itself lost almost the power of protest against whatever enormities, and even came to confirm and enforce the putting of good for evil and evil for good, of darkness for light and of light for darkness.

(3) In this dishonor done to God they must necessarily degrade themselves also. The worshipers must become assimilated to what they worship. As their lusts had turned them away from the Holy One, so their new gods were made to sanction the lusts which had created them, and to which He whom they had forsaken gave them up. Man without God, whom it is his distinctive glory to recognize, becomes as the beast which has none. But the beast is therefore not a moral creature; man degraded to the beast becomes immoral. It is a necessary, but righteous retribution, in which man inflicts the punishment upon himself. His service of the creature is but his own gratification; which is but of the lusts which war against the soul. He feeds but the serpent-brood, which sting and torture him; and the world becomes thus a dreadful scene of suicidal warfare, the secret heart of which is blacker than its deeds declare.

Unfortunately, men have bowed down before all sorts of things, from planets to carved wood or stone, whatever people thought might influence their lives, completely against God's will (see Q.16). How did it come to this? We find the answer in Romans 1: when people refused to honour God their hearts and minds were darkened, they became fools and bowed before man-made images (verses 21-23). When man refuses to bow before God he will end up bowing before all manner of things. In our post-Christian society, particularly in Western countries, people may profess to be non-religious but they demonstrate in practice that they still feel the need to look up to, to revere, and to bow before, something or someone, be it football, athletes, singers, or all manner of celebrities.