BY DEFINITION: IDOLATRY IS NOT JUST THE WORSHIP OF FALSE, WANNABE, OR PSEUDO-GODS, BUT THE WORSHIP OF THE TRUE GOD IN IMAGES, DISTORTION, OR BY DECEPTION.
"Those who cling to worthless idols lose their chance of mercy," (cf. Jonah 2:8).
"To whom will you compare [God]?" (cf. Isaiah 40:18). Religionists and anthropologists believe that man's concept of God evolved from panentheism (God is in everything), pantheism (everything is God), polytheism (many gods--conventional wisdom told them that the more gods the better!), to henotheism (one chief God with lesser gods mostly territorial), and finally to monotheism (one God). Even though there are modern discoveries proving that monotheism came first and mankind spoiled the truth of God that had been revealed in the beginning.
God is the only true security blanket so to speak and trustworthy hope and anchor for our soul. They believe that the intellectual result should now be naturalism or materialism in which all that exists is nature itself, and all things can be explained by natural causes. Atheism is the natural consequence of this whereby God becomes irrelevant (God is dead) and no longer necessary to understand and explain the world and nature.
Science has become a religion! Evolution is merely a way to become intellectually fulfilled with the answers, forgetting that God is the Answerer and the Bible is the Answer Book. Academics have come to the view that they can only believe what science can prove! This is "scientism," not science, or when science is taught dogmatically, it's no longer science but religion. All false gods are of man's imagination, but the true God is beyond what we could conceive because He's infinite and perfect and the finite cannot grasp the infinite. We cannot even know God exhaustively, but only truly! We never could have conceived of the real God!
But what is idolatry? Putting anything in the place where God belongs, taking precedence and priority. J. B. Phillips wrote Your God is too Small. It can also be having a too-small idea or interpretation of God and putting Him in a box or having "too human" a concept of God as Luther accused Erasmus of Rotterdam of; for instance, I just like to think of God as a great Mathematician, simply as Jesus, or the Man upstairs! It's when we worship what should be used and use what we should worship according to St. Augustine. We use things and relate to persons and therefore we understand God as a Person. God says to us: Who is like Me? To whom will you compare Me? Idols are manmade whether of the kinds in the world of historic antiquity of stone and pottery or of hero-worship and celebrity worship or trusting in man and not God.
These gods cannot save you! We must not trust in princes or authority figures but see them as mere servants of God like as we are. Our exclusive loyalty is to God alone: Jesus is Lord, not Caesar is Lord who was a wannabe deity or demigod. Indeed Voltaire was onto something when he said that man has created God in his image! It is true that men are looking for someone bigger than life and some kind of person worthy of admiration and adulation but God alone is our celebrity and hero.
We cannot invent a God of our own choosing but must recognize and accept the God who is there and does exist or we do not live in reality as Plato said, "If I want to know how to live in reality, I must now what God is really like." We cannot escape God nor His judgment, He alone is to be feared! He alone is the one true living God that will not die or go away but sees all. "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me" means that He must have exclusive allegiance, not any man, church, nation, or even family. When people say, "My party right or wrong or my nation right or wrong" they are misdirecting zeal. If Jesus is on the throne of your heart then it's misdirected and you're deceived.
But even Israel wanted to be like the other nations and have a king and they were a true theocracy with God in charge but they rejected it. Do we want to be people-pleasers and fit in with the norms of society or do desire to be godly? Don't let anyone or anything rival God's rightful domain in your life. We must take spiritual inventory and rethink our priorities, commitments, and devotions. Are we seeking man's praise or God's? We must not inadvertently pay homage to false gods that are manmade simply because we want to fit in and be one of the guys and be in the crowd. We must dare to stand alone and stick up for what we believe and declare our Christian colors. Our soul loyalty is to Jesus as Lord denying the Roman oath allegiance of "Caesar is Lord," as blasphemy and idolatry.
In the final analysis, do we desire the world's delicacies and rewards or what God can offer us eternally? In summation, A W Tozer said, "What we believe about God [our idea of Him] is the most important thing about us." CAVEAT: Worship [pay homage owe allegiance to] the LORD thy God, and Him shalt thou serve." (Cf. Matt. 4:10) Soli Deo Gloria!