Idolatry and the “Great Reversal”

Genesis 3:22

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.”

Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God

God accepts that human have indeed breached the Creator-creature distinction. Not that human have now become gods but that they have chosen to act as though they were—defining and deciding for themselves what they will regard as good and evil. Therein lies the root of all other forms of idolatry: we deify our own capacities, and thereby make gods of ourselves and our choices and all their implications.

At the root, then, of all idolatry is human rejection of the Godness of God and the finality of God’s moral authority.

Idolatry dethrones God and enthrones creation. Idolatry is the attempt to limit, reduce an control God by refusing his authority, constraining or manipulating his power to act, having him available to serve our interests. At the same time, paradoxically, idolatry exalts things within the created order . . . . Creation is then credited with a potency that belongs only to God; it is sacralized, worshipped and treated as that form which ultimate meaning can be derived. A great reversal happens: God, who should be worshipped, becomes an object to be used; creation, which is for our use and blessing, becomes the object of our worship (166-5).