Religious Sins, Old and New
“Idolatry” and “sorcery” may seem outdated in today’s terms, but they have broader and more current application than we might realize.
As you think about the many problems in the world, does it seem that human failings are often the cause—that human nature is easily given over to doing things that are contrary to our best interests? And when we think of such failings, would it be too far off the mark to say that we are often sinning against ourselves? Have we become our own worst enemies, causing pain and distress to ourselves and others, and damaging our global living space? Would it be unreasonable to name such behavior “sin”?
In a 2,000-year-old “sin list,” the New Testament writer Paul set down more than a dozen counterproductive behaviors, some of which may seem, at first sight, to have little relevance today. You might say that’s no surprise after that amount of time.
Take, for example, two religious acts (the second of Paul’s four categories of sin; we covered sexual sins here), namely worship of idols and engaging with evil powers. When Paul wrote in the Greek language of the time, eidólolatria meant bowing to idols—the work of human hands. Pharmakeia referred to the enhancing of the worship experience with drugged, trancelike states of mind and was connected with witchcraft or sorcery. These activities still exist in limited ways; but as we’ll see, idol worship and engaging with evil powers continue more widely in other forms.
It’s said that anything that consumes our attention for long periods of time can become an idol and displace what is more important, even spiritual. Where God is concerned, anything that interferes with devotion to Him is idolatry, setting an idol in place of Him. There are many varieties of idol worship, including the glorification of celebrities, sports, money and possessions, power, self-love, personal appearance and identity, a partner, the world of entertainment, sexual gratification, or a political party or movement. Addictive behaviors can develop toward any of these “idols”: Money worship may be associated with addictive gambling and compulsive spending; narcissistic personality disorder is a complication of self-obsession; and a UK study concluded that celebrity worship syndrome affects more than a third of the population on an intense-personal or borderline-pathological level.
“John Calvin famously said the heart is a veritable factory of idols. I used to think this was just typically dark, hyperbolic, Calvinist misanthropy. The older I get, though, the more I concede it to be a sober statement of fact. Idols are our specialty.”
Further, we are often warned about the dangers of prolonged social media exposure. Could the smartphone become not only an idol but even dangerous? When the social media we consume is trivial and of little consequence, we run the risk of “brain rot”—the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of 2024. Without vigorous stimulation, the brain does suffer. And doubtless the brain also suffers from wrong moral choices, or “moral rot.” New York Times columnist Roger Cohen notes, “The deepest form of rot is the erosion of the distinction between truth and falsehood.” Recognizing what is wrong or sinful then becomes less and less likely. One sin leads to another in a downward spiral, as we’ll see next.
Beyond Paul’s writings, the word pharmakeia appears in the apocalyptic book of Revelation, where the world of the end-time is pictured as a global trading system that has seduced humanity: “Your merchants were the magnates of the earth, and all the nations were deceived by your sorcery [pharmakeia]” (Revelation 18:23). Does this mean that magic spells or psychedelics will be elements of the system, or is it rather that the seduction of wealth and trading power acts like a drug to bring humans to a stuporous state? These traders and magnates of the final days are obsessed with making great fortunes, buying and selling the world’s commodities. Chillingly, they also trade in the “bodies and souls of men” (verse 13, New King James Version). The seduction of wealth is so strong that human beings have become just another commodity. Moral rot has set in; the line between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, has disappeared.
Now, we might want to divert our eyes and tell ourselves that Revelation is just an irrelevant ancient book, or that it’s for a future time, or that no one in today’s economic order indulges in corruption. Yet new academic research shows that human trafficking—that is, modern slavery—is a growing, massive global problem estimated to involve 65.3 million victims, of whom 56 percent are subjected to sexual exploitation, and 64 percent are female. The annual global profit from these appalling transactions is estimated at US$236 billion. While this is illicit trade, it is very much part of the global system. Some sell and some buy. According to the UN International Labour Organization (ILO), a trafficked worker can be bought for about $10,000, with “sexploited” victims going for more than $27,000.
If viewed alongside the GDP of various countries, illicit trade could be ranked among the top five, with an estimated market value of between $3 trillion and $5 trillion. The writer of Revelation says the trade is not just in bodies but also souls (Greek: psuche); that’s to say, individual destinies. “Forced labour perpetuates cycles of poverty and exploitation and strikes at the heart of human dignity,” writes Gilbert F. Houngbo, director-general of the ILO. In other words, this trade is a sin against our fellow human beings, depriving them of what we all desire: honor and respect—simple dignity.
“The high profits per victim of forced commercial sexual exploitation are a reflection of the extremely limited share of earnings trickling down to the victims. . . . The fact that [it] is illegal in most countries means that victims have limited or no recourse to justice.”
We might also consider the downsides of licit trade. Just because something is not illegal does not make it moral. Is there corruption in the legal marketplace? Do traders there tolerate moral compromise for the sake of wealth? Might we find corruption across the global system?
In 1930, during the Great Depression, economist John Maynard Keynes wrote about the future with optimism. He looked ahead a hundred years and believed that, despite the economic crisis, universal prosperity was on the horizon. At the same time, he noted that the far-reaching system change required would not be immediate. He framed this in an interesting way: “For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.”
Though 2030 is almost here, universal prosperity is not close to arriving. We can only assume that the corrupted system of deceit and greed Keynes recognized as temporarily necessary continues till now. That’s to say, Revelation’s picture of an immoral end-time global economic order is strikingly prescient.
In the end-time, idols and drugged states of mind turn out to be more closely connected than when Paul first described them as religious sins. Humanity is constantly in the process of worshiping itself and its economic order, as if in a trance, stupefied.
Paul wrote about natural human ways (including certain religious acts) as “works of the flesh,” but not without signaling the way not to sin. The physical world we inhabit puts demands on us that can only be overcome by a different way of thinking and doing. Paul called the result of that better way “the fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22–23). It is outwardly directed toward others in love and kindness, peace and goodness, self-control and other traits that remediate the failings of the natural mind.