IDOLATRY MISUNDERSTOOD

By Shlomoh Sherman
August 20, 2020


The idea that God hates those who worship other deities but Him was, I believe, misunderstood by the ancient Israelites. They believed that the heathen were actually worshipping divine statues. I believe they were directing their worship to the statue as a focal point wherein the god resided much the way we worship in a synagogue or church as the focal point for the God we worship.

We are not to make graven forms. That is why, in the Eastern Church there are only icons and not 3-dimensional statues and why in Protestant churches, there are no images. Even the Catholic Crucifix has been changed to the empty Cross among the latter.

The misconception of what idolatry was and is is still misunderstood today as evidenced on the page at http://www.travisagnew.org/2016/02/01/the-subtlety-of-idolatry/ where he says: Idolatry is acknowledging that God created us in his image and then trying to repay the favor.

David Garland at https://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/religious_studies/SNTS2002/garland.htm discusses the prolem encountered by some of his early converts in 1 Corinthians 8 - when he discusses Paul's warnings about even appearing to acknowledge idolatry. He says: I suggest that the problem of food dedicated to an idol was not easily solved. Converts who turned from the worship of many gods and lords in their sundry guises were not so sure where to draw the line or if it was even necessary to draw the line when it came to food that had been sacrificed to idols as they tried to balance their identity as Christians with their assimilation to the highly competitive, pagan Corinthian culture.

James, brother of Jesus, must have been aware that Paul's converts were eating forbidden foods when he admonished Paul not to have his converts eat blood or things sacrificed to idols. Paul agreed but never insisted very hard about blood.

Yet Paul was so adamant about his gentile converts not practicing idolatry in any form that he went to drastic lengths to warn them that idoatry leads to homosexuality somehow.

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
- Romans 1:22-27

I looked up the central prayer in Judaism at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_have_no_other_gods_before_me

The central prayer of Judaism is the Shema Yisrael in which the belief in a single god is reaffirmed: Hear, O Israel: HASHEM is our God, HASHEM is one.

THE SHEMA
The prayer is found in printed form in the mezuzah, the small, tubed case on the doorposts of homes of observant Jews. This form was chosen to fulfill the mitzvah (biblical commandment) to inscribe the words of the SHEMA "on the doorposts of your house." Thousands of martyrs did not go to their deaths muttering a numerical truism. When they said that God is one, they meant that nothing in the universe is comparable to this God or can take the place of this God; that is why they are willing to die rather than abandon [these values].

According to the gospels, Jesus said the greatest commandment was to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” The scripture in Deuteronomy to which he referred is the SHEMA. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus contrasted worship of God and running after material possessions and warned, “You cannot serve both God and money.”

I have always found it interesting that he gives this answer to a man who asks what is the greatest commandment without the main preface: HASHEM is our God, HASHEM is one.

This preface may have existed in Matthew in an original manuscript but later removed as Christianity developed the dogma of the Trinity.

Be that as it may, today's idolatry may be the more authentic idolatry than that of the ancients. They at least believed they were worshipping a god. Today, Jesus' words ring true: You cannot serve both God and money. And who worships money today more than our national leaders?


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