“The glory of God is a human person, truly alive.” - Irenaeus of Lyons
The most positive approach to understanding why the Hebrew prophets are so focused on idolatry throughout the Old Testament is their emphasis on Yahweh being a living God, not a distant or detached deity, certainly not malevolent or manipulating like pagan ones. For the Hebrews, their God was one who interacted with his creation and people. The God who cared, cared enough to forgive, cared enough to make a covenant, or as Hagar, the exiled mother of Ishmael declared, “the One who sees me and hears me.” This living God is a source of origin and a nurturer of continual growth. This understanding of is so different from other pagan conceptions of God, for whom the gods are powerful but unpredictable adversaries.
In Second Corinthians again, Paul helps us understand this intimacy as the Spirit of God dwelling within the human heart:
“we are the temple of the living God. As God said, I will live in them and walk among them. I will be their God and they will be my people.”
Paul is literally echoing the prophets of the Babylonian exile, like Jeremiah and Isaiah and Ezekiel in these words. But in this letter to the Corinthians, he talks about the kind of change that has happened. Now that it seems as though God is not in the temple because the oppressors continue to dominate, so the temple now is within the human person. And so access to this living God is abrogated, short-circuited if you will, by choosing a deity that is not alive, that does not care for our living.
This phrase, living God, highlights the contrast between the God of Israel and idols made of wood and stone that were worshipped by other nations. These pagan idols were inanimate and powerless while the God of Israel was alive, active, and capable of performing miracles. God for the people of Israel was the ultimate source of life, both physical and spiritual. It's interesting that in John's Gospel, Jesus refers to himself as living water, living bread. This idea of something that is involved, dynamic, involved in natural growth seems to be so important to this concept and where idolatry doesn't have that natural aspect.
One of the most notable articulations of this problem is in Psalm 115, beginning in the fourth verse, the psalmist says,
“their idols are merely things of silver and gold, shaped by human hands.
They have mouths, but cannot speak, and eyes, but cannot see.
They have ears, but cannot hear, and noses, but cannot smell.
They have hands, but cannot feel, and feet, but cannot walk,
and throats, but cannot make a sound.
And those who make idols are just like them, as are all who trust in
Them.”
In Mesopotamian culture and the building of civilizations and ziggurats, a city would be built around a temple designated as the dwelling of a god often a giant wooden or metal structure would come. A city formed because of the need of people to care for the imagined physical needs of that God (as well as real physical needs of all of the needed servants). Animals were butchered and roasted, the meat offered to the god and ritually eaten by the people. Often there was a priest whose job it was to use a gigantic toothbrush to brush the stony or wooden or metal teeth of the God. But if one were to become like these gods and lose all these wonderful, intrinsic, and wonderfully expressive and productive human gifts, eyes, mouths, ears, noses, hands, feet, throats, they would have kind of a sclerosis of their soul, or a dystrophy, if you will, such that idolatry becomes ultimately fatal. That is, if you are a living human person destined to grow, you hasten your death by becoming like your idol.
Even some of the traditional Greek myths show this, like the story of King Midas, who everything he touched turned to gold. Unfortunately, when he touched the things he loved most, like a wife or a daughter, they turned to gold and they died. This is kind of the ancient paradox that if you turn others into objects, or permanent expressions of art, or reflections of one's own desire, you in a sense destroy their humanity. You effectively kill their souls.
And one of the great benefits of our time is we realize that in our knowledge of the brain and of learning, of the power of intentionality and affirmation, that we can create new realities. This is not really a new insight. It's a very ancient, traditional one. One of the best articulations of this is by St. Clara of Assisi, the young woman contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi, who founded her own order of female devotees to partner with Francis in their reform. She says,
“we become what we love, and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ. Rather, it means becoming the image of the beloved and image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God's compassionate love for others.”
So if we love a living God and a loving God, we become more living and loving people. Very powerful insight. This deeper understanding of idolatry as loving the wrong things clarifies why the great Shema of Israel, the greatest commandment is that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. Not an arbitrary command of a so-called jealous God, but a desire, advice, a path given by a deity that wants you to live. In fact, when a scholar of the law wanted to test Jesus, he asked him, teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And when the young man quoted the Shema, Jesus proved, saying, you have answered correctly. Do this and you will live. This is from the Gospel of Luke, the 10th chapter, verses 25 through 28.
To sum up then, idolatry is essentially loving the wrong things. When we started this year’s Empire Grove Camp Meeting, a “Luau with the Lord” featuring the teachings of the apostle Paul, Brother Matthias Tanner presented a sermon at Sunday worship about Jesus’ parable teaching that we all are searching for a “pearl of great price.” And this teaching is echoed in another Gospel verse, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will lie”
In this metaphor of life as a search for hidden treasure is a key to understanding the problem with idolatry. That is, when you are looking for and loving the wrong thing, you are blinded, you stop growing, and you eventually die. In the context of our need to belong to God and one another, idolatry isolates us or gives us the illusion that we are disconnected from God, with the painfully practical result that we become alienated from, and hurtful towards, one another. The hurt, the loneliness, the destruction, the injustice, the suffering that comes from that perceived disconnection is the fruit of idolatry.
So I think instead, we have to deal with that kind of messy uncertainty that comes from not being in control, by surrendering to an ascending acceptance of reality as it is, and not be controlled by fear, or by especially fear of death, and not to give power to others by trying to numb those fears or ignore those fears, overcome them with a kind of social control. So why not make a graven image of God? Why not try to put God in a box so that you can manage your understanding? Ultimately, that will shut off your questioning, your searching, your wondering, the creative life that keeps you alive and keeps you looking for love, looking for the God who wants to love you.
Turns out that that old heresy hunting bishop Irenaeus was onto something when he was fighting to preserve the idea that God’s anointed one Jesus was fully divine and fully human at the same time, or as Paul would say on Colossians, “God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself.” In the context of Ireanaeus’ quote, Christ is both the “glory of God” AND “the fully living human person.
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