(David) Justice Potter Stewart's 1964 assertion that he couldn't define obscenity and pornography, "but I know it when I see it," is the consistent Christian response to idolatry in our own day: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." Yeah, right. Just like Justice Stewart knew pornography....
Stewart's problem was twofold. First, by rejecting any objective standard for obscenity he disdained the necessarily defining character of law. Second, subjectively, his standard for obscenity began just beyond where he was willing to go and was thus inherently self-justifying.
This is the problem with human standards for sin. Any view of sin that leaves its ultimate definition to the sinner will of necessity prove self-justifying. We are never idolaters when we define idolatry because the boundary between innocent image and "idolatry" always lies one step beyond where we stand.
So, as we've seen recently in interaction on this blog, in the most objectively idolatrous nation in the history of the world and the most image-crazed nation on earth, literal idolatry does not exist....
