Herbert Schlossberg took his title from Hosea: “They made idols for their own destruction” (Holy Bible, Hos. 8.4). Idols for Destruction is not a book about literal carved images. Rather, the book is an account of what a culture worships when it still uses religious language for worldly objects that, ultimately, cannot save it.
However, I take issue with the counter-culture being part of the same congregation. In fact, I reject it.
If the church I attend changes its gospel, I stop attending and I protest against it. I refuse to follow the program of worship. I voice against the mass. In your apt essay, you liken this to still being enslaved to the idol. Yet I am not. And even if some grifters abuse the counter-culture, the counter-culture demanding a return to morality and Christian respect are as prophets in the wilderness proclaiming the coming of the kingdom of God.
If we as Christians do not speak against this idolatrous construct and demand a cleansing of the filth in the industry, then we are salt that has lost its flavor.
No, I will go on voicing against the current woke idolatry. I will go on promoting a return to Christian values in everything I do, including gaming. Perhaps it is a hopeless task in the face of mounting demonic power within the gaming industry: so be it. I will run my race and do my part. Much as those poor prophets did thousands of years ago, screaming God into the wind of defiance and two nations (Judea and Israel) who refused to listen.
The idol here is the circuit that cannot survive the death of the subject. The channel that needs you to stay sick so tomorrow’s video exists or the viewer who feels he has "resisted" evil because he watched someone else complain.
People should not confuse a prophetic office with a YouTube content plan. One can end poor and unfollowed while other has to keep the golden calf aflame and in frame for as long as he can. If your work still makes sense when the industry never repents and the views go to zero, you are not the congregation I was talking about.
I mostly agree, but I'd argue that you're off on a couple of points:
1) Most importantly, there's a psychological difference between actual importance and what we might call "cultural" importance. The Church in the Middle Ages was both; people were raised in the Catholic culture but they also filtered their entirely social and personal philosophy of life through their understanding of Church teachings. Almost everybody did this. Even though some took it more seriously than others, everyone recognized its "actual" importance.
By contrast, very few gamers today consider gaming on the same level of actuality. It's important to them, maybe very important, but only in a cultural way, much like people who go to church when they're attracted by how it makes them "feel". Sure, people will go to war (literally, sometimes) over things that are culturally important, but that's because those people aren't seeing the thing clearly. To these people, who believe nothing very strongly, gaming and other things they make into false idols don't bear the weight of their hopes and dreams, don't create and then focus their beliefs and philosophies. More likely, they *have* no long-terms hopes or dreams with any substance, and they'd roll their eyes at you if you talked about belief and philosophy in any meaningful way.
In other words, for modern society, the false idols we make of hobbies and materialistic things are cheap simulacra of actual importance, and the people know it because they still acknowledge that their lives are substantially empty, and their devotion to the idol is weak. Particularly crazy people might kill for it, but no one will die for it. These modern idols pale even in comparison to actual false idols of old, like the golden calf. At least people invested existential seriousness to those things; no one thinks gaming will meaningfully inform their purpose. They don't even think in those terms anymore.
2) Far less important, but your point about pricing seems entirely to disregard inflation. Adjusted for inflation, prices for gaming have remained steady or actually decreased for the same type of thing: comparing consoles to consoles, game purchase to game purchase. Sure, modern additions to the gaming ecosphere like season passes or DLC increase the cost to the individual gamer, but those have no comparison in earlier gaming. That's even without getting into what's being purchased objectively; even the most mid game today has far, far more content in its base release than a game from twenty years ago, and even the weakest new console outclasses the PS2 by orders of magnitude. The price for games doesn't tell us that gamers are being ever more sucked into an unaffordable situation where they devote enormous amounts of money into their new "god". If anything, gaming in this regard is at least partially a victim to larger market forces (that are also spiritually troubling, but for a different reason).
True, Gaming is not medieval Catholicism. Almost nobody filters a whole philosophy of life through Rockstar the way a 13th-century peasant filtered it through the Mass. Most players would roll their eyes at “this is my god.” But I still think it is a description of a late idol. That's what Schlossberg is concerned with. He is writing about America, not Baal’s temple. The greater point is that many people live empty lives and even the cheapest simulacrum can hold a place in their soul that the church vacated. Nobody has to think GTA will save their soul for it to organize hope, money, and belonging. Weak worship is still worship. It is just worship that already suspects it is fake and keeps kneeling anyway. They will not die for Sony, but they will still miss Sunday morning worship for it. That is enough for Hosea.
Inflation does not wash the idol clean. Borrowing is an act of faith. You buy the thing now because you believe the money will be there later. That is trust placed in a future you have not been given. At the scale of a whole people, that faith has already failed. The debt is larger than the life that is supposed to pay it. Printing more money does not create the goods that sustain. The act only shoves yesterday’s appetites into today’s prices. Inflation is the past coming due. If you casually say “adjusted for inflation the game is cheap”, you are still speaking the language of the loan and assuming the role of the prol. You assume the future will underwrite the present. Hosea’s people did the same with their lovers and their calves. They spent what was not theirs and when the bill showed up they made new excuses. Those excuses did not feed them. The wiser move is to stop treating the future like it will continue to owe us.
If millions cannot pay for the vice today, they cannot afford the god. The ledger already says so. The United States is about $40 trillion in debt. That is overwhelming evidence that our idols have come for their due. A people who, for many years, borrowed on faith that tomorrow would cover them. Tomorrow arrived as inflation and interest.
Apt comparison because it is true, Mister Gray.
However, I take issue with the counter-culture being part of the same congregation. In fact, I reject it.
If the church I attend changes its gospel, I stop attending and I protest against it. I refuse to follow the program of worship. I voice against the mass. In your apt essay, you liken this to still being enslaved to the idol. Yet I am not. And even if some grifters abuse the counter-culture, the counter-culture demanding a return to morality and Christian respect are as prophets in the wilderness proclaiming the coming of the kingdom of God.
If we as Christians do not speak against this idolatrous construct and demand a cleansing of the filth in the industry, then we are salt that has lost its flavor.
No, I will go on voicing against the current woke idolatry. I will go on promoting a return to Christian values in everything I do, including gaming. Perhaps it is a hopeless task in the face of mounting demonic power within the gaming industry: so be it. I will run my race and do my part. Much as those poor prophets did thousands of years ago, screaming God into the wind of defiance and two nations (Judea and Israel) who refused to listen.
The idol here is the circuit that cannot survive the death of the subject. The channel that needs you to stay sick so tomorrow’s video exists or the viewer who feels he has "resisted" evil because he watched someone else complain.
People should not confuse a prophetic office with a YouTube content plan. One can end poor and unfollowed while other has to keep the golden calf aflame and in frame for as long as he can. If your work still makes sense when the industry never repents and the views go to zero, you are not the congregation I was talking about.
I mostly agree, but I'd argue that you're off on a couple of points:
1) Most importantly, there's a psychological difference between actual importance and what we might call "cultural" importance. The Church in the Middle Ages was both; people were raised in the Catholic culture but they also filtered their entirely social and personal philosophy of life through their understanding of Church teachings. Almost everybody did this. Even though some took it more seriously than others, everyone recognized its "actual" importance.
By contrast, very few gamers today consider gaming on the same level of actuality. It's important to them, maybe very important, but only in a cultural way, much like people who go to church when they're attracted by how it makes them "feel". Sure, people will go to war (literally, sometimes) over things that are culturally important, but that's because those people aren't seeing the thing clearly. To these people, who believe nothing very strongly, gaming and other things they make into false idols don't bear the weight of their hopes and dreams, don't create and then focus their beliefs and philosophies. More likely, they *have* no long-terms hopes or dreams with any substance, and they'd roll their eyes at you if you talked about belief and philosophy in any meaningful way.
In other words, for modern society, the false idols we make of hobbies and materialistic things are cheap simulacra of actual importance, and the people know it because they still acknowledge that their lives are substantially empty, and their devotion to the idol is weak. Particularly crazy people might kill for it, but no one will die for it. These modern idols pale even in comparison to actual false idols of old, like the golden calf. At least people invested existential seriousness to those things; no one thinks gaming will meaningfully inform their purpose. They don't even think in those terms anymore.
2) Far less important, but your point about pricing seems entirely to disregard inflation. Adjusted for inflation, prices for gaming have remained steady or actually decreased for the same type of thing: comparing consoles to consoles, game purchase to game purchase. Sure, modern additions to the gaming ecosphere like season passes or DLC increase the cost to the individual gamer, but those have no comparison in earlier gaming. That's even without getting into what's being purchased objectively; even the most mid game today has far, far more content in its base release than a game from twenty years ago, and even the weakest new console outclasses the PS2 by orders of magnitude. The price for games doesn't tell us that gamers are being ever more sucked into an unaffordable situation where they devote enormous amounts of money into their new "god". If anything, gaming in this regard is at least partially a victim to larger market forces (that are also spiritually troubling, but for a different reason).
True, Gaming is not medieval Catholicism. Almost nobody filters a whole philosophy of life through Rockstar the way a 13th-century peasant filtered it through the Mass. Most players would roll their eyes at “this is my god.” But I still think it is a description of a late idol. That's what Schlossberg is concerned with. He is writing about America, not Baal’s temple. The greater point is that many people live empty lives and even the cheapest simulacrum can hold a place in their soul that the church vacated. Nobody has to think GTA will save their soul for it to organize hope, money, and belonging. Weak worship is still worship. It is just worship that already suspects it is fake and keeps kneeling anyway. They will not die for Sony, but they will still miss Sunday morning worship for it. That is enough for Hosea.
Inflation does not wash the idol clean. Borrowing is an act of faith. You buy the thing now because you believe the money will be there later. That is trust placed in a future you have not been given. At the scale of a whole people, that faith has already failed. The debt is larger than the life that is supposed to pay it. Printing more money does not create the goods that sustain. The act only shoves yesterday’s appetites into today’s prices. Inflation is the past coming due. If you casually say “adjusted for inflation the game is cheap”, you are still speaking the language of the loan and assuming the role of the prol. You assume the future will underwrite the present. Hosea’s people did the same with their lovers and their calves. They spent what was not theirs and when the bill showed up they made new excuses. Those excuses did not feed them. The wiser move is to stop treating the future like it will continue to owe us.
If millions cannot pay for the vice today, they cannot afford the god. The ledger already says so. The United States is about $40 trillion in debt. That is overwhelming evidence that our idols have come for their due. A people who, for many years, borrowed on faith that tomorrow would cover them. Tomorrow arrived as inflation and interest.