IDOLATRY IS LIKE POISONING

More than 25 years ago (1982), seven residents of the Greater Chicago area made an assumption that proved fatal. They all took a dose of Extra Strength Tylenol® that had been laced with potassium cyanide. What they thought was medicine proved to be poison. This crime, still being investigated as of this very week (February 4, 2009), is still unsolved, in spite of the fact that one man went to prison for sending an extortion letter to Johnson & Johnson and is presumed to be the guilty party by many.

Imagine the horror of taking what you thought was beneficial and discovering, too late, that it was killing you! That, in a very real sense, is what Hosea shares with Israel. And that, is the danger we face when we replace the healing power of the Living God with human substitutes. We may think some new philosophy, technology, or movement is going to save us from ourselves, but instead, it can poison us by leading us away from God.