Idolatry

Every once in a while while sitting in church I wonder what sermon I would give if it were my duty.  I always come back to the same thing - idol worship.  A few years ago I attended a sermon on idolatry; the sermon covered things like the worshiping other gods, statues, etc., and caring about money, cars, sports, fame, spouse/significant other, and sex more than God.

These are all bad things, sure, but I think it misses the big ticket item that many Christians need to understand.  I would add two items to the list: your kids, and, the big one, God.

Let's get the first one out of the way.  It's easy for people to sit back and say "I don't put money before everything else in my life" but suggest that their kids should not fill that role and they become hysterical.  While I say this from the perspective of someone without children, there are more important things than your kids.

Next, God.  How can God be an idol that detracts from my relationship with God, you may ask.  Here's how: many people don't worship God.  They worship "God."  The quotation marks are important, here indicating the word.  People create a mental image of God, combining, perhaps, passages from the Bible, sermons they've heard, and personal experience, then use this as a proxy for God, believing it to be Him.  They may worship a god who is like a father to them, or a god who sent his only son do die for them, or perhaps worship the son who died for them.  These mental images of God are just that.  These are ideas that are summarized in the few words of the Bible.

Often these images of God are extrapolations of passages from the Bible.  "God Hates Gays," says the picketers.  How do they know?  Because there are a few passages of the Bible that mention homosexuality in a negative light.  "You should love your neighbor, " says someone else.  Why do they believe this?  Because the Bible mentions loving your neighbor a few times.  They have created a model for God based on passages of the Bible, a model which they can understand and refer to instead of going back to the source.

In fact, I have heard many times Christians say that if you have a question you should go to the source - go to the Bible.  The Bible is not the source.  God is the source.  The Bible is a collection of pointers that people can use to prepare them to know God.  Jesus' messages were lessons meant to prepare people to know God.  There is a Buddhist saying that I like quite a bit.  It's summarized as "the finger that points to the moon is not the moon."  Here is one version of the story:

Wu Jincang, the nun, asked the Patriarch Huineng, “I have studied the Mahaparinirvana Sutra for many years, yet there are many areas I do not quite understand. Please enlighten me.” 

The patriarch responded, “I am illiterate. Please read out the Sutra to me and perhaps I will be able to explain its meaning.” 

The nun said, “You cannot even read the Sutra!  How are you able to understand the meaning?” 

“Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon’s location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger, right?”

Bringing it back to Christianity - don't confuse the Bible with the opinions of God.  A more kosher way of saying this: don't confuse knowing the Bible with knowing God.  In fact, this is a message that Jesus repeated many times.  The Pharisees knew the Bible inside and out but neither did they understand its meaning or God.  They used the Bible to create a model for God and then based their laws on the model rather than the real thing.

Are you worshiping an image of God instead of the real thing?  One way to find out is ask yourself what God is like; what Godly rules to you follow?  If you have to rely on your memory, on things you read in the Bible or learned in church, then you're hindering yourself.  God wants you (or at least me, but I assume you too) to love everyone, not because Jesus said so, but because that's the way He is.

This reminds me of the book of Genesis.  Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and were forever separated from God.  The most common explanation I have heard is that the knowledge is a metaphor for sex.  This never sat well with me, as it doesn't fit with the tree's name, the separateness of human and animals (animals also have sex), or with the fall of man.  It seems more like an extrapolation from people who have demonized sex based on their own extrapolations of other Bible verses.  My pastor explained it in a sermon as the knowledge of right and wrong - that the Devil persuaded Adam and Eve to eat of the tree so that they would know what is good and evil and rely on themesleves instead of relying on God for this knowledge.  They would know what God knows and, by extension, be as great as God.

This ties back neatly to my point - by creating models of God in our mind, by relying on the words in the Bible or our own intellect, we trick ourselves into thinking that we know what God knows and we no longer rely on Him.

There are also more tangible idols closely related to Christianity.  The cross or crucifix are images of God that we can easily turn into an idol.  From Exodus 20 we see that God does not want any image of Himself created:

Do not make any gods to be alongside me; do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold...If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with dressed stones, for you will defile it if you use a tool on it.

And I find it interesting that God appeared to people as ideas that are difficult to visualize.  He appeared as fire, a pillar of smoke, and as a whisper.  These are things you cannot easily carve.  He made it impossible for us to create a picture of Him, perhaps because he knew that if we could picture him we would, and we would no longer know him but our picture instead.  From Deuteronomy 4:

You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars — all the heavenly array — do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.

In the midst of writing this entry I was surprised.  My pastor gave a sermon on idolatry (not the surprising part, as we're in a series on the Ten Commandments).  He spoke of how we can create an image of God in our mind and that becomes an idol to us.  He also mentioned other potential idols that Christians may not see as such: the cross and crucifix, the church building, candles and incense, pictures of Jesus, a hymnal, your spouse and your kids.  I cannot claim that my pastor would agree with this post, as I take the idea slightly further than he, and in a more confrontational way, but it was refreshing to hear him bring up these issues.  Letters from Jesus' disciples to old churches, which make up much of the New Testament, often dealt with controversial or painful issues that the people needed to hear.

More from Exodus 20:

You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.