Idolatry

It is something of a psychological comfort for human beings to construct images of God for themselves. It makes the universe, the unknowable, feel within our grasp…within our control. Most forms of idolatry aren’t in stone, wood or metal. They are in our minds. We can construct images of a higher power, a great spirit, in our mind and worship what we have created without the aid of a piece of stone or wood. We can give our image whatever characteristics and whatever names we desire.

The mystical traditions of many cultures believe we can gain some measure of control over a thing, or a being, if we can find it’s true name, it’s secret name. This is somewhat akin to waking up in the morning to find hair growing out of your knuckles, your eyes turning red and a funny taste on your tongue. The first thing you want to know is: What do I have? You go to your doctor and he examines you. After consulting his library, and looking appropriately serious, the doctor comes back and says: You have Lycanthropy! (Now, you have no idea that your doctor has just told you that you are a werewolf…) You are relieved to hear that there is a name for what you have because if there is a name for it, then we must have some control over it. You see naming something is a kind of idolatry. We limit a thing by naming it. We can now pigeonhole it and, instead of dealing with the real thing…we can deal with our mental image of what it is. You might say the control is all in your head.

Every culture on earth, throughout the ages, has created an image of God, or gods, in their belief systems. That image may fit whatever ideals the people have at the time. Some gods are bloodthirsty, some fickle and some very unsympathetic. In our own modern culture we are encouraged to turn to our own ‘higher power’, our…god, “whatever we conceive that to be”. The gods of the world reflect the values of the men who conceived of them. We, humans, usually conceive him to be something we’ve seen in the natural world…a part of creation.

God is NOT a part of creation. Scripture reveals that God is outside of creation. Some things about Gods nature can be gleaned from His creation…His sense of beauty for example. But we should never limit God by anything in creation. If you are a person of Judeo-Christian faith your image, your conception of God, ‘should’ come from one source…the Bible. In reality many ideas about God, even for most Christians, don’t come from the ‘Revealed word of God’. Many of our conceptions come from human traditions. Many that come from human traditions are a form of Idolatry. None of our conceptions should contradict what is revealed in scripture. We aren’t going to ‘get it’ perfectly…but we should always strive to understand Who God is and what His values are. Believers should reflect The One True Gods values…not the other way around.

It is ironic that many professing Christians that wouldn’t dream of bowing down to a false god, do so regularly. They bow down to a god, not revealed in the scriptures but one, conceived of by human beings and taught in human traditions. Such is the concept of a god who would allow a newborn child who dies, or a person who dies in a culture or time wherein the Gospel is unknown, to suffer in an ever burning Hell-fire. That is not the Just, Righteous, Merciful God revealed in the scriptures. That is someone’s image of god based on a misunderstanding of scriptures and on a counterfeit spiritual tradition. We are never going to fully understand Gods nature, not as mortals anyway, but the things we need to know have been revealed to us.

What we believe about God matters because we act on our beliefs. Where we get our concept of God matters because any source other than the scriptures ‘can’ lead us into idolatry. There is only One God and to understand His nature we must study the scriptures. That’s where He reveals Himself to us…

Does your god reveal your values or does your life reflect Gods values?