Jeremiah 10:5 “Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field,
their idols cannot speak;
they must be carried
because they cannot walk.
Do not fear them;
they can do no harm
nor can they do any good.”

In my memory I had associated such pithy descriptions of idols with Psalm 115 or 135, but the Lord didn’t pull any punches through Jeremiah, either. What a graphic picture! Yet millions of people around the world are snared by such “scarecrows.” Interestingly, some Christians are afraid of idols, but it is clear that there’s not much Biblical basis for that. The problem is in what we believe, and the devil and his demons are quick to seize on our misunderstandings. It’s not that we are to be lax about spiritual warfare, but that we aren’t to be obsessed with physical idols. Of far more danger to the average person are the lying philosophies that seek to rob us of devotion to Christ. Among those is of course atheism, which often commingles with the others, but there is also hedonism and humanism of various stripes, not to mention all the lying religions that don’t espouse idols. For people in Western countries today, entertainment personalities are all too aptly called “idols,” and a quick look at the magazines in the supermarket checkout lane shows us that many people are indeed obsessed with them. They are about as important as scarecrows!

Living and ministering in Japan, which calls itself “the land of 8 million gods,” the question of idols has been pertinent since childhood. Many Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples are beautiful places indeed, and even as missionaries, my family took plenty of people to visit them as tourists. My task isn’t to campaign for their demolition, destroying them like the Taliban did the huge Buddhist statues at Bamiyan, but rather to liberate people from thinking they have power either for evil or for good, as this verse says. God has equipped me for that, as Paul points out in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5. That applies not only to false religions, but to every other lying philosophy. We are either bound or free in our minds and hearts, and my job is to set people free. (Luke 4:18-19)

Father, in this my first visit to the US in four years I am seeing so many who are bound by devotion to idols of all sorts, though they don’t think of them as idols or gods. I ask Your mercy! Father, pour Your Spirit out on this nation for repentance, so that those who have said they know You may know You indeed and turn from everything else to pure devotion to You. Nothing else will heal this land, and it is gravely ill. May every member of the Body of Christ “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles” (Hebrews 12:1) and follow You with their whole hearts, for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!