“In the beginning, human beings were made to worship and serve God, and to rule over all created things in God’s name (Gen 1:26-28). Paul understands humanity’s original sin as an act of idolatry: ‘They exchanged the glory of the immortal God… and worshipped and served created things rather than the creator’ (Rom 1:21–25). Instead of living for God, we began to live for ourselves, or our work, or for material goods. We reversed the original intended order. And when we began to worship and serve created things, paradoxically, the created things came to rule over us. Instead of being God’s vice-regents, ruling over creation, now creation masters us. We are now subject to decay and disease and disaster. The final proof of this is death itself. We live for our own glory by toiling in the dust, but eventually we return to the dust—the dust ‘wins’ (Gen 3:17–19). We live to make a name for ourselves but our names are forgotten. Here in the beginning of the Bible we learn that idolatry means slavery and death.”
–Tim Keller, “Talking About Idolatry in a Postmodern Age,” Accessed at <http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/articleprint.php?a=2> on July 1, 2007.
