Thou Shalt Not Have False Gods

The Lord God warned his people against the worship of false gods throughout their history, especially through the Prophets of the Old Testament.  Pagan worship and superstition remained a problem for the early Church because many of the new Christians were Gentile converts living in a society soaked in it.  The North African apologist, Tertullian (d. 220) wrote a book, "On Idolatry", to help them.  In the following excerpt, he explains the nature of this sin:

"The principal crime of the human race, the greatest guilt of the world, the cause of judgment is -- idolatry.  For although each fault is of its own kind, although it is destined for judgment under its own name, still it is reckoned in the crime of idolatry.  Let us forget the names of sins and instead recognize their works for what they are.  Idolatry is homicide.  Who is killed?  If a man conducts it out of his own desire, only himself, not a stranger or an enemy.  By what snares does it kill?  Its departure from the truth.  What weapon is used?  The enmity of God.  How many blows are received for the crime?  As many as there are instances of it.  Whoever denies that idolatry kills, denies that the idolater commits homicide.  In the same way, recognize idolatry as adultery and defilement, for he who serves false gods is without a doubt an adulterer of the truth, for adultery is everything false.  Likewise a person steeped in defilement.  For who is a fellow worker with unclean spirits and does not go forth defiled and polluted?  For this reason, the Sacred Scriptures use the word 'defilement' as a reproach against idolatry.  Fraud is an action in which one person seizes what belongs to another or refuses to give what is due to another.  Committed against man, it has the name of the greatest crime.  Idolatry is fraud in that it denies to God the honors that belong to him and confers them on others, so that insolence is joined to the act.  But if fraud, as much as defilement and adultery bring death, then, taken equally with these cases, idolatry is not freed from the guilt of murder."