Many within the household of God, due to their commitment to the work of their hands (what they do for God), will not repent of their idolatry—the idols of gold and of silver and of brass and of stone and of wood which now can neither now see nor hear nor walk.
When life is terrible, filled with trouble and pressure and our suffering never seems to end, it feels that God DOES not love or help us. Hence, many seek some solution other than this mystical formula of “by grace through faith.” Hence, our idolatry.
In our idolatry, instead of worshipping only God, we worship and honor idols of gold and of silver—things connected to the divine and the angelic (things that are endemic in our religious culture). As a result, we venerate religious things, religious deeds, the angelic, all manner of personal and communal “holiness,” spiritual gifts and the gifted ones, and much like our veneration of “holiness” we also venerate religious and cultural godliness.
