30 Top Quotes on Idols and Idolatry

Everyone must be aware of the dangers of idolatry:

As will become quite clear after reading the following quotes, an idol is anything we put in the place of the one true God. It can be your job, your car, your spouse, your hobby, your appetite, your desires, even your ministry. Idolatry is putting someone or something else ahead of God.

There would be so many great quotes one could offer on this topic. One book all about idols I have already quoted extensively from, so I will not feature those authors here. I refer to Os Guinness and John Seel, eds., No God But God: Breaking With the Idols of Our Age (Moody, 1992). https://billmuehlenberg.com/2022/07/08/no-god-but-god/

Here then are 30 quotes by 21 authors that we need to be aware of:

“Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.” Acts 17:16

“The religions that man creates are actually attempts to escape having to face the true God. We invent religion — not because we are seeking God, but because we are running away from Him.” James Montgomery Boice, Romans

“Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.” John Calvin

“Every one of us is, even from his mother’s womb, a master craftsman of idols.” John Calvin

“Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.” Exodus 20:3-6

“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” 1 John 5:21

“Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood, who pray to gods that cannot save.” Isaiah 45:20

“This is what the Lord says:
‘What fault did your ancestors find in me,
    that they strayed so far from me?
They followed worthless idols
    and became worthless themselves’.” Jeremiah 2:5

“What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, and anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give . . . An idol is whatever you look at and say in your heart of hearts: ‘If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.’ There are many ways to describe that kind of relationship to something, but perhaps the best one is worship.” Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods

“If your god never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself.” Tim Keller

“Images of the Holy easily become holy images – sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast.” C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“The prayer preceding all prayer is ‘May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.’ Infinitely various are the levels from which we pray. Emotional intensity is in itself no proof of spiritual depth. If we pray in terror we shall pray earnestly; it only proves that terror is an earnest emotion. Only God Himself can let the bucket down to the depths in us. And, on the other side, He must constantly work as the iconoclast. Every idea of Him we form, He must in mercy shatter.” C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

“You don’t have to go to heathen lands today to find false gods. America is full of them. Whatever you love more than God is your idol.” D. L. Moody

“It is as impossible for a man to live without having an object of worship as it is for a bird to fly if it is taken out of the air. The very composition of human life, the mystery of man’s being, demands a center of worship as a necessity of existence. All life is worship. There may be a false god at the center of the life; but every activity of being, all the energy of life, the devotion of powers—these things are all worship. The question is whether the life and powers of man are devoted to the worship of the true God or to that of a false one.” G. Campbell Morgan, The Ten Commandments

“What each one honors before all else, what before all things he admires and loves, this for him is God.” Origen

“There is nothing so abominable in the eyes of God and of men as idolatry, whereby men render to the creature that honor which is due only to the Creator.” Blaise Pascal

“An ‘idol’ is anything which displaces God in my heart. It may be something which is quite harmless in itself, yet if it absorbs me, if it be given the first place in my affections and thoughts, it becomes an ‘idol’. It may be my business, a loved one, or my service for Christ. Any one or any thing which comes into competition with the Lord’s ruling me in a practical way, is an ‘idol’.” A. W. Pink, Gleanings in Exodus

“It is not necessary for a man formally to deny God and Christ, in order to be an idolater. Far from it. Professed reverence for the God of the Bible and actual idolatry are perfectly compatible. They have often gone side by side, and they still do so. The Israelites never thought of renouncing God when they persuaded Aaron to make the golden calf.” J. C. Ryle, Churches Beware!

“Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just; a God who is all love, but not holy; a God who has a heaven for everybody, but a hell for none; a God who can allow good and bad to exist side by side on earth, and will make no distinction between good and bad in eternity. Such a God is an idol of your own creation as real as Jupiter or Moloch; as true an idol as any snake or crocodile in an Egyptian temple; as true an idol as was ever moulded out of brass or clay. The hands of your own notions and emotions have made him. He is not the God of the Bible, and aside from the God of the Bible there is no God at all.” J. C. Ryle, Practical Religion

“As long as you want anything very much, especially more than you want God, it is an idol.” A. B. Simpson

“Loving a holy God is beyond our moral power. The only kind of God we can love by our sinful nature is an unholy god, an idol made by our own hands. Unless we are born of the Spirit of God, unless God sheds His holy love in our hearts, unless He stoops in His grace to change our hearts, we will not love Him… To love a holy God requires grace, grace strong enough to pierce our hardened hearts and awaken our moribund souls.” R. C. Sproul

“The cow gave no law and demanded no obedience. It had no wrath or justice or holiness to be feared. It was deaf, dumb and impotent. But at least it could not intrude on their fun and call them to judgment. This was a religion designed by men, practiced by men, but ultimately useless to men.” R. C. Sproul on Ex. 32 in Grace Unknown

“False gods patiently endure the existence of other false gods. Dagon can stand with Bel, and Bel with Ashtaroth; how should stone, and wood, and silver, be moved to indignation; but because God is the only living and true God, Dagon must fall before His ark; Bel must be broken, and Ashtaroth must be consumed with fire.” Charles Spurgeon

“For God to fail or refuse to value Himself preeminently would implicate Him in the sin of idolatry. Idolatry is honoring anyone or anything as god, instead of God. If God were ever to act in such a way that He did not seek His own glory, He would be saying that something more valuable than Himself exists, and that is a lie. Worse still, it is idolatrous.” Sam Storms, Pleasures Evermore

“The God of the modern evangelical rarely astonishes anybody. He manages to stay pretty much with the constitution. Never break our by-laws. He’s a very well-behaved God and very denominational and very much like one of us…we ask Him to help us when we’re in trouble and look to Him to watch over us when we’re asleep. The God of the modern evangelical isn’t a God I could have much respect for.” A. W. Tozer

“The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.” A. W. Tozer

“An idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand.” A. W. Tozer

“Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous. The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.” A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

“Idolatry is of all sins the most hateful to God because it is in essence a defamation of the divine character.” A. W. Tozer, This World: Playground or Battleground?

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