No Idolatry?
You shall not make for yourself an idol 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; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.
Exodus 20:4-5
The past is a foreign country! As I type the familiar words of this commandment, I am struck by their strangeness, the sense that they come from a distant and unknowable past. It’s a world of strange carvings and strange rituals, strange cosmology, and a jealous God. How do we apply this commandment?
Some traditions have argued that it is a ban on religious representative art. But why ban art, when the biblical text itself shows such exuberance and richness of metaphor, painting pictures of God as father, shepherd, king, shield and hiding place? Is creativity in words so very different from art in all its other forms?
Idolatry is so strong a theme and so strongly condemned throughout the Bible, that we cannot just dismiss it as superstitions long outgrown. We do need to ask what contemporary forms it takes. Modern writers have identified nationalism, fundamentalism, materialism, political ideologies, the car, the family and sex as objects of idolatry, and we can see as we look round today’s world the passionate idolatries of nationalism, militarism as well as self-serving greed.
But those of us living on a more pragmatic plane cannot simply assume that idolatry does not apply to us. We have to ask ourselves what we value most highly – try to identify our most important priority. Is it money, or career status, or the trappings of a successful life? Can we more easily identify the gods served by those around us, but fail to see our own? If our sense of worth, our security and identity are too closely tied in to our work, our status or even our appearance, then we are in danger of becoming idolaters. Reflection and self-examination are important aspects of our times with the Lord. Here is a challenge to our priorities and our prayers.
Margaret Killingray
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