“The Gospel is the cure for our idolatry. Abiding in Christ by faith and abiding in His word on a daily basis protects our hearts from the consumeristic idolatry of the Mall and our minds from the idolatrous philosophies of the Universities and Theaters.”

For decades, the consumeristic and narcissistic culture in which we live has served the unsuspecting and unconscious worshippers of North America with extravagant buildings in which to showcase the idols of a sophisticatedly synchronistic and paganistic society. In his profoundly insightful and influential 1989 article, “Mall Culture,” Steven L. Shepherd writes:

The malls are the Temples of our culture, and going to the mall is–in truth–an initiation rite. The shopkeepers should be glad about this behavior, because, as the children gaze through the windows of the well-stocked shelves within, they are learning to want, learning to ache for things supplied by others of which there can never be enough…Going to the mall is part of the relentless and powerful seduction of our children by that portion of our culture that affords human beings no more value than the contents of their wallets. It is part of the initiation into a life of wanting that can never be sated, of material desire that will never be satisfied, of slaving to buy and to have, of a life predicated upon unhappiness and discontent.1

Taking a cue from Shepherd, John Pahl, Stanley Hauerwas and James K. A. Smith have helpfully developed this idea in a more robustly theological and sociological way. For instance, Smith notes:

Let’s keep in mind that the mall is a sort of intensification of a wider web of practices and rituals associated with consumer capitalism. In this sense, one may say that marketing is the Mall’s evangelism; television commercials, billboards, internet pop-ups and magazine advertisements are the mall’s outreach. The rituals and practices of the mall and the market are tactile and visceral–they capture our imaginations through the sense of sight and sound, touch and taste, even smell. The hip, happy people that populate television commercials are the moving icons of the consumer gospel, illustrations of what the good life looks like: carefree and independent, clean and sexy, perky and perfect. We see the embodiment of this ideal again in the icon-like mannequins in the windows of the mall.2

While some may rightly suggest that the shopping mall has essentially been supplanted by the internet, there are serval other Temples of idolatry in our culture–for instance, the university, movie theater, stadium and gym. What makes these “temples of idolatry,” is not so much the size of the buildings as it is the potency of the worldview that preys on the lives of those outside its walls–calling them to enter into the rituals within. Consider how each of the following temples of idolatry function:

The University – The University is the intellectual idol factory in our culture. We continually witness every conceivable ungodly worldview taking root there, while the Christian theistic worldview is the great subject of hostility. In, Desiring the Kingdom, Smith captures the essence of Universities, calling them “Cathedrals of Learning.” Though many of the great Univsities in this country were founded on a Christian and Calvinistic Theistic worldview, they have become bastions of intellectual rebellion against the true and living God. Interestingly, even universities that have always been secular in the inception have take on the architectural form of a Cathedral. Smith notes:

I’ve always thought it fitting that a secular university like the University of Pittsburgh, which has no religious past, features one of the more stunning pieces of academic architecture in the United States: the Cathedral of learning. Towering over the campus (and the city), the building is intentionally gothic, invoking the architectural grammar of the medieval churches and cathedrals. But here the inspiring, pointed architecture is no longer striving to point to the Creator, but rather seeks to serve a different, more imminent ideal: the truth of enlightened human reason, marshaled for the progress of the race.3

Though the allurement of the university is discovered in the freedom that young adults feel as they cast off the restraints of biblical revelation and rely on their own fallen human autonomy, the result has been, for far too many, a lifelong bondage to the idols of the mind. The Psalmist captured, in the rawest form possible, the futility of such idolatry: “Those who make them become like them.”

Read More