Ironic Idolatry

 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them  2nd Commandment, exodus, English translation

Of all the ten commandments allegedly given to Moses on Mount Sinai,this one has to be the most fiercely debated and most widely interpreted. The Catholic Church did away with it all together in the Catechism (catholic 'book of rules and interpretations') and has been making idols by the millions ever since. The Muslim world observes it strictly, forbidding any type of image or statue to be made that represents God, or any other form to be worshiped, yet elevates the words of the Quran to divine status. Orthodox and protestant religions allow the making of images, so long as they are not worshiped of themselves. Some Churches forbid representations of God, but allow images of Jesus on the grounds that they believe this is how god represented himself to humanity. Wars have been fought over it, religions split into factions, and thousands of hours of heated words have been passed because of it. It was the excuse for the violent suppression of paganism among other traditions, and for the colonisation of countries and continents.

The irony in all this is that religions obsession with this particular statement is a contradiction in terms. By giving it so much weight and import, the commandment itself has been turned into an idol, a thing of worship.  In the fight to give obeisance to the individual interpretations, the whole point of it has been lost. The question that so often goes unasked is this. Why? Why would God forbid the making and worshiping of Idols? If the purpose of the commandments is to protect his children from evil and sin, as it seems to be, how does this serve that purpose?

Answering this question leads to a couple of others, Firstly, what is God? Secondly, what is worship? The implications that this commandment has for the first question is that God is NOT anything that is made by man. The implications for the second question is that worship is a form of obeisance, of bowing down, of surrendering power and control to. Therefore to worship idols is to give power and authority to things that are not God, to invest value in things that have no intrinsic divinity. This is pretty obvious really, worshiping things made by our own hand is really quite silly. How could something that we created have more power or divinity than it's creator?The great joke is that religion itself is most often idolatry. In our seeking for divinity we so often invest our power and worship in the man made structures of religiousness - in building, books, teachings, priests, rules and regulations. In this way, religion separates us from God, leaves us chasing man made shadows and giving obeisance to a thing not truly divine.

Thus I call it Ironic Idolatry. The very thing that promises us a 'path' to Grace, leads us away into an empty worshiping of man made dreams. However, religion is not to blame for our idol worship. It is we who create religion, and we who choose to invest it with power. Why? Why did Moses's brother create the Golden Calf after the first revelation? Why does every great teacher and Prophet get turned into a religious Idol the moment they die. Why do we as a species insist on worshipping the things we create and animate, rather than that which creates and animates us? 

The problem seems to be in the worship, the act of surrendering control. While ever we are worshiping that which we have created, we  are actually (as its creator) still in control of it. It's a bit of a trick we like to play on ourselves - to pretend to give our obeisance to that which we can change and modify at our own whim. Worshipping God, on the other hand, seems terrifyingly out of control to us. Even the recognition of the existence of God as a reality, rather than a man made image or concept, is devastating to an ego who wishes to reign over what it considers it's creation. To genuinely contemplate, even for a moment, that from which we have emerged, which governs the turning of the stars and the beating of our hearts, is profoundly humbling and profoundly destructive to our image of ourselves as being able to control life.

If one sincerely answers the simple question "how much of my life, my self, my world, do I really control?", the reality of the divine becomes instantly undeniable and deeply threatening to an identity based in dreams of power. We control almost nothing, not our breath, not our brains, not our feelings, not our instincts, urges, abilities, preferences, desires, tendencies or talents.  Our SELF is handed to us whole and complete, and the only choice we get to make is whether or not we are going to go with it, or fight against it - perhaps not even that choice. Idol worship is done because it serves the purpose of keeping us from the knowledge of God, of  turning God into something that we think we have control over. "Better", says the fragile ego, "to reign in hell than serve in heaven'.

The obeisance we give to idols is a false one. We do not truly bow down before them, but create them to serve our purpose, to inflate our sense of power. How ironic that we are oppressed by our own creations, controlled and manipulated by the very things we create to try and establish control over ourselves. What a complicated little game we play, a chess board full of idols which move us around like pieces on a chess board. We pretend that we are seeking God, yet God has never been lost to us. Any instant that we forget to believe in our self made idols, if we relax our false worhip for just the slightest moment, the reality of God hits us like a truck.

So, "How much of your life, your self, your world, do you really control?"

Together we rise.