Sentences with word «idolatrous»

Niebuhr's message to a generation that has become idolatrous in its worship of «the American way of life» is his reminder that «we must fight their falsehood with our truth, but we must also fight the falsehood within our truth.»

They fought each other to extinction, and on their ruins was established that Roman Empire which became an object of idolatrous worship in its turn.

Faith in Jesus Christ is often, perhaps usually, expressed in idolatrous forms, such that the relative is absolutized, the partial is treated as a whole.

Communities serve marriage in three unique ways: They reorient us away from idolatrous tendencies, encourage us in our spiritual growth and offer us much - needed companionship.

I don't know anyone who crafts golden statues like the Israelites did, but idolatrous practices are just as common today as they were thousands of years ago.

A peace movement arising out of terror is as idolatrous as peace based on the bomb.

, by a profound determination to have a part in covenant history; or Serah, a granddaughter of Jacob, gracefully breaking the news of Joseph's survival to the old Patriarch in a song; or Mann's sensitive interpretation of the barrenness of Rachel as divine judgment not against Rachel herself, but against Jacob for his consuming and therefore idolatrous love of Rachel.

The authors are clear that the church can easily use its internal history in distorted, complacent, self - justifying, and idolatrous ways.

That false practice of presence seduces us into idolatrous worship of self, of nation, of ideology, so that the courage to lead a life of tough dignity and serious accountability disappears.

Although it, like all the others, is subject to idolatrous understanding, the conflict between serving the Earth and serving God is far less than the conflicts engendered by serving Christianity, nation states, or economic growth.

Since God has always wanted a relationship of love with us, and all people can now have this relationship through Jesus Christ by the indwelling Holy Spirit, why would we want to return to the failed and idolatrous religion of law?

Of course the celebration of the American experience can be excessive, even idolatrous.

Even though Shane Claiborne has me convinced that Christianity's preoccupation with politics is misguided, if not idolatrous, I can't bring myself to quit cold turkey... so I'm taping tonight's big religious forum, hosted by evangelical pastor Rick Warren.

Alfred North Whitehead, the great Anglo - American philosopher whose thinking is behind the «process conceptuality» to which some of us subscribe, rightly called such ideas idolatrous, and spoke of them as apostasy from the «Galilean vision» (as he styled it) in which God is «modeled» after the figure of Jesus Christ.

It was not that I failed to recognize the existence of such idolatrous belief, though historically it was more commonly enunciated by preachers than by politicians, but that I believed it to be a perversion of the central and normative tradition.

He referred to his lectures as «Lay Sermons,» in which he damned his «idolatrous age» for ignoring «the living God thundering from the Sinai of science... to worship the golden calf of tradition.»

If this fear is born of some near - idolatrous view of the text itself, then historical criticism, whatever its faults, helps to release one from this fear.

Herberg complained that such religion, «however sincere and well - meant,» is «ultimately vitiated by a strong and pervasive idolatrous element.»

This was considered an offensive and idolatrous ritual to the ancient Israelites and is forbidden by the Torah.

This, in turn, leads invariably to one of two extremes: the renouncement of all responsibility; or the assumption of total control in the manipulation even of truth, in a vainglorious and idolatrous projection of self on to the very canvas of creation.

Persecution, war, injustice, superstition — many are the wrongs and great is the human misery caused by idolatrous religionists.

Holding this pagan idolatrous symbol as sacred goes against what the Christ taught.

It also allowed him, in The Church Against the World, to critique the church's stance in a culture caught up in idolatrous faiths which take partial human communities, activities and desires as cherished objects.

Hence, the church is thrown back upon its own resources to ask whether it has a gospel and a missionary thrust powerful enough to convert men from idolatrous loyalties and provide them with a vision of the future that transforms their basic commitments.

The Torah emphasizes the importance of avoiding pagan idolatrous customs and it is clear that this ritual was considered especially offensive.

Historians who think the history told in the Bible is pious and distorted ought to ask themselves why it is that these biblical historians who supposedly want to prove something always tell us about the disasters under good kings and the victories under idolatrous kings.

Reverence for tradition, respect for the biblical word, and reliance on the authority of the church embodied in its priests and scholars are finally idolatrous because we look to a human word or institution to express ultimate meaning for all time.

Of course, it won't ultimately help them much; fundamentalist Muslims do not take kindly to Christians (or ancient archeological treasures that they consider idolatrous abominations, for that matter...) and brutal theocracy is the only alternative there to dictatorship; democracy is just not an option unfortunately.

Koyzis» book sounds two basic themes» that «ideologies» are necessarily idolatrous and that «Christian democracy» offers a nonidolatrous political «vision.»

We can validly call for the ending of this form of idolatry only as we can point toward the prospects of a less idolatrous society, one that has a better chance of serving God through serving God's creatures.

The result was (is) a «strange hybrid of superstition and idolatrous religious concepts.

We repudiate the growing trend to embrace idolatrous tenets and rituals from non-Christian faiths and to intermix these with Christian faith and practice.

This is their capacity to mask idolatrous or self - centred love under the form of universal benevolence.

Parenthood becomes idolatrous when we seek meaning through the lives of our children.

Human spirituality can be either true or false - either related to the ultimate meaning and fulfillment of life revealed in Christ or simply created by people in their self - centeredness and rejection of God, and therefore idolatrous.

It's still idolatrous even if we don't consider the the flag divine because your swearing your allegiance to a flag (a graven image) which represents the state.

Membership in a church «family» can become idolatrous if a congregation includes only people who are socially comfortable with one another.

Yet he does not accept Barth's claim that all non-Christian religions are only idolatrous strivings after God.

Simultaneously they relativized the sacramental orientation of early religion by warning of the narrowing effects of idolatrous attachments.

Groups have always succumbed to making idolatrous claims for themselves.

Under the rule of bad, crafty, proud, and idolatrous kings (Joash, Jeroboam, Menahem), Israel will for a period recover its glory, supremacy, and political liberty, and will live in the illusion of its own power and reconstituted glory until the final collapse and deportation.