Prosperity feeds idolatry

I've been reading Hosea in my quiet times, and today I read this:

As [Israel's] fruit increased
he built more altars;
as his land prospered,
he adorned his sacred stones.
Their heart is deceitful,
and now they must bear their guilt.
The LORD will demolish their altars
and destroy their sacred stones.

And then a thick, glossy catalogue arrived from a company supplying 'Ecclesiastical Furnishings & Garments'. Here I could buy anything from a perspex communion table for £2273, or a stations of the cross set for £47,150, to a wallet-sized hologram, 'Prayer to our Lady Fatima' for £1 (inc. VAT). Probably the worst item is a '12" resin infant Jesus with halo' for £70, though the fridge magnet of St Jude is really ugly (but 'only £5.50'). Sadly these aren't in their online catalogue, so I can't show you the pictures!

Now some of you might think I'm just a fundamentalist protestant taking a poke at the Catholics. Not so. I agonised long and hard about how much (if anything) we should spend on our new chairs at church. We must be able to justify every penny we spend because the danger is that the more we prosper, the more we spend on adorning 'sacred spaces'.

If we think such expenditure adorns the faith, we're sadly mistaken because the New Testament constantly reminds us that we don't need altars or temples - we have Jesus, and we're to adorn our lives with holiness and good works. This theme is especially prominent in 1 Peter, which is interesting since Paul had to argue with Peter not to impose Jewish customs on Christians. Clearly, by the time he wrote his first epistle, Peter understood how the OT had been completely transformed by Jesus, and he left us an absolute gem of a letter!