'Here Are Your Gods!': Faithful Discipleship in Idolatrous Times Paperback – 29 Sept. 2020

Having attended All Souls, Langham Place, around fifteen years ago, I've been blessed more than once by Christopher Wright's preaching and was looking forward to reading this latest book of his.However, it quickly became clear that he has jumped on the mainstream media bandwagon of Trump-bashing. Boris Johnson and Theresa May also come in for criticism, but strangely not so much politicians to the left of centre. Wright is also emphatically anti-Brexit - the 2016 EU Referendum result, along with Trump's success later in the same year, left him "staggering with a mixture of baffled incomprehension and alarm". The fact that a strong biblical case can be made for Brexit doesn't seem to have occurred to Chris Wright.It's easy to bash Donald Trump - it's less easy to acknowledge his very real accomplishments such as criminal justice reform, opportunity zones, African American and Hispanic unemployment rates at record lows, and the restoration of funding for historically black colleges. Not only that, but a number of prominent African Americans endorsed him (often passionately) at the recent Republican National Convention, including civil rights legend Clarence Henderson. Dr Wright's critique of the Christian West meanwhile resembles that of the Black Lives Matter movement, which is Marxist and against the nuclear family among other evils.In the epilogue Wright states that he was "depressed" and "angry" after the UK General Election of 2019. Why? Would Corbyn have been the better option? Does socialism really help the poor and most needy? Has socialism ever worked anywhere? Would a Corbyn-McDonnell administration have been answered prayer for Wright? Is Chris Wright now praying fervently for a Democratic victory in November? Will that finally alleviate the plight of 'Plantation Democrats'... or has Trump in fact been the one who actually made a difference? What would Wright make of Trump supporter Kimberly Klacik's bright and optimistic vision for Baltimore, a city that has been repeatedly let down by its Democratic leaders?I won't say that I'm "depressed" and "angry" by Wright's book. It has helped to sharpen my own convictions, for which I'm grateful.

Chris Wright has done a great service to the church with his support for good teaching and writing, and in his own writing, especially his profound treatment of the often neglected by evangelicals ethical and political teachings of the Old Testament. Now he takes up again his pen and in a short book (part of which was previously published) looks at the theme of idolatry and its implications for how we think about political and ethical issues in our societies. I found this very stimulating and helpful and also at the end in an epilogue moving, for we were both profoundly affected by the terrible car crash last year which took the lives of three of our friends.The book is short, highly readable, and looks at another often neglected issue: idolatry in the Bible and idolatry now. Idols deprive God of his proper glory, they distort the image of God in human beings and in the end they are profoundly disappointing - they if you like "don't work". The biblical tragedy is that "the pagan nations stay obstinately loyal to the Gods they have, even though they do not exist, while Israel swaps the only living God it knows for such nonentities". See Jeremiah 2. And that's true today as well. "The things we thought could deliver us from evil and in which we invested great amounts of intellectual, financial and emotional capital in the hope that they would deliver us, have instead spectacularly disappointed us".The rise and fall of empires with their different Gods shows us that all such idols are bound to disappoint, and the danger of trying to combine our idols with the worship of the living God, something that is of course highly relevant today if we look for example at the USA and elsewhere. (Jeroboam I is certainly apposite here- Jeroboam advocated the worship of Jehovah but using golden calves, not the Jerusalem temple so he could control the theo-political agenda). The West is showing serious signs of collapse on moral and political fronts and eventually, all nations and empires rise and fall as the Bible clearly shows us. Only the City of God continues.So how should we Christians live and act "politically" (in the broad sense) today? I found this a particularly helpful section. The following principles are laid down:-Modesty - when God allowed the Israelites to have a king they were not to be like other KingsIntegrity and accountability - Samuel in effect invited the people of Israel to "audit" his work "whose ox have I taken?"Justice: God's fundamental demand - and this must mean caring for the poor, the vulnerable (the unborn also!) who cannot speak for themselves. (Proverbs 31)We must also expose fearlessly the idols of our age such as:-Prosperity and consumerism, money, celebrity, (see the inroads of the Prosperity Gospel),National pride and national security, demonising the otherSelf-exaltation (ie pride - back to the fall.) "relentless and shameless narcissism has become characteristic of Western culture".The Bible is full of warnings about the dangers of idolatry. We often skip over the OT but Wright is surely right to argue "Israel was created not only to be the vehicle of God's covenant relationship but also a model of what a society governed by the character and demands of..God should look like..(and also to show) the kinds of behaviours that prove ultimately destructive of human welfare".I do however have two caveats. Chris is a brilliant theologian but perhaps less familiar with history, economics and contemporary politics. Historically, just to take one example, its not accurate to say that Europe in 1400 was on a par with the Ashanti, Aztec and Incan empires and enriched itself through evil colonial expansion. Europe was far ahead of these empires and led others with one major exception - China. Europe's rise to power certainly did have some aspects that are often airbrushed out (slavery being the best-known example) but it also benefited from independent thought, entrepreneurialism and international commerce - which made a crucial difference with China. There are some important economic oversimplifications - is simply not true to say that inequality has increased in our lifetime and the world is divided into rich and poor. It may have been true in 1965 (and it may be true within countries) but its absolutely not the case today - "Factfulness" by Hans Rosling will give you the details. The last 50 years have seen the most extraordinary reduction in global inequality, due, with all its faults, to free-market capitalism. Also do we really "worship the military" by spending amounts that "can reach staggering proportions" on it? Military spending as a proportion of GDP is in fact at an all-time low in the West.Chris is rather obviously not a fan of Brexit, Boris or Trump and nor am I - but it is I believe unhelpful to characterise opponents of Brexit as racists or believers in the "law of the jungle..let the strongest win" or to praise the European Union as having kept the peace since WW2 (that would I suggest rather be NATO). I voted against Brexit but respect Christians who for valid reasons voted for it. There are surely arguments on both sides here and on other left/right issues and to demonise people who voted for Brexit (or Trump) as racists is only going to result in polarisation. Chris is as entitled as anyone to his political views but in a few places, they tend to colour in a one-sided way some of the overall arguments. That is not to say that there are not valid biblical criticisms of Boris or Trump, which he fairly makes, but there are equally so of Hilary and Corbyn, which he doesnt.The second caveat is that Chris rightly puts his finger on many of the ills of contemporary society such as modern-day slavery, exploitation of the poor and ecological destruction but perhaps the most grievous ill of our age- abortion - gets only a passing mention. That was surprising to me.Fortunately, none of this to me diminished the overall value of the Biblical exegesis, and this is an excellent, thought-provoking and highly original book steeped in Chris's deep knowledge of the Bible in general and the often neglected Old Testament in particular. This book is important and will make you think! Idolatry was a huge trap then and so it is today and its very hard to see your own idols and avoid weaving them into the Christian message. As Calvin said our hearts are idol factories and the production facilities of these factories have only increased over the last few thousand years. By looking and thinking deeply about what the Bible teaches as Chris has so helpfully done, to describe and set out in a fresh and insightful way the biblical principles on how to detect and destroy idols, we will be better able to advance the Kingdom of God and glorify his name.

A learned deep thinking book which is well researched and well written. I found it directed principally at an American audience and therefore I did find the style of writing slightly jarring. That said, it is an excellent interpretation of idolatry and how today's society has been drawn away from the original path