[OBW]

While the NT verses are not entirely clear, for the most part, the use of the term idolatry in the Bible is not some catch-all for everything that we turn our attention to. It is mostly about actual active worship of some other god or image of a god.

I do not disagree with the general expansion of the term as it gets to issues of our hearts. But I do not believe that you can show objective evidence of idolatry with the examples provided, although each one of them points to impure hearts and motives and says all they need to say about the persons that did what they did.

But have we accomplished anything by calling it idolatry? Have we made their error worse than it already is? Or have we made ourselves feel better by pointing out how bad they are? We know they are bad. As John McCain recently said, there is still evil in the world. Some of it is the BBs.

It is sort of like noting that someone killed someone else. It is then determined that that person hated the other one. Now it's a hate crime. So we should execute them twice.

My point, and I think SC's (at least at some level) is that this is not accomplishing anything except making us madder than @#&$^ at those dirty idolatrous $&^$#s.

I think this horse is dead. Yeah, at some level, you can sweep it into idolatry.

What is the real reason that we are looking into this? Will it help any of us who suffered at their hands get any better? Only to the extent that we come to realize that they were wrong to do what they did. I think we already got there. Even where they did it with more pure motives and we can't find any true idolatry, it was still wrong and not our faults. Heaping more stones on them won't make the pain go away. It is an expression of anger, and no matter what the psychologists say, hitting a pillow does not really help. It just reinforces your anger. It may diffuse the rage, but it does nothing for the anger because it does not address the actual issue. We have to heal from it. We have to forgive them even if we would not let them or their voices within 10 miles of us again.

Still my opinion. And I'm entitled to it.