Sorry for the lack of posts, but I had to wash my hair.  No, it was actually that old demon of impending school application deadlines choking out all of my creative fervor.  As much as I would have rather been spouting ego-centric philosophies and meaningless opinions on here, I had to reserve those for the application essays.  Oh, and I’ve been in Colorado for over a month (check out the gallery for photos).

I will get to Colorado and its mountainous splendor in the next post, but I wanted to start things back with something truly fun.  A topic that is contemporary, relevant, and altogether captivating:  worship of false idols.

It seems arcane, but stick with me.  There has to be a reason that the pastor I worked with in Birmingham gave an entire sermon on idolatry, the men’s breakfast group I visited read an entire book about it, and last night’s high school study group devoted two hours to it.  What’s more, the three Abrahamic traditions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – all make a pretty big deal out of it.

In fact, the first two of the Ten Commandments, or Decalogue, in the Hebrew Bible hit the subject pretty hard:

1) “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”

2) “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…”

The second one actually goes on to talk about punishing the children of offenders to the third and fourth generation…it’s pretty serious stuff for Jewish people, apparently.

As for Muslims, whose Q’uran actually looks to the Hebrew Bible for authority (What? We have something in common?), the punishment for idolators goes back to Abraham:

Abraham said, “You believe in idols besides God only out of worldly love, but on the Day of Judgment you will reject and condemn each other. Your dwelling will be fire and no one will help you.

“Your dwelling will be fire.”  Ok, so idolatry is bad for Muslims too.

Now for Christians.  Admittedly, Jesus doesn’t talk a great deal about it, though he pretty clearly states the importance of following the commandments:  “…whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.”  We can presume this includes idolatry.  Then, the rest of the New Testament really gives idolatry what for.  The letters to the Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians, keep repeating this whopping list of bad sins to avoid – and it always includes idolatry.

Religions preach against the worship of idols.  Great.  Why does this matter to people living in a 21st century environment where the “pagan” gods of millenia ago are nowhere but our history books?  And why make such a big deal about idolatry when there are so many other problems – poverty, murder, injustice, stealing – to worry about?  

I think we can answer both of these questions by first defining “idolatry.”  In one of those ultimate sin lists from the New Testament, the author of Colossians reveals something peculiar: “Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).”

Wait, what?  Greed is idolatry?  But greed just means desiring too much stuff, keeping your mind solely focused on acquiring things, caring more about money than anything else, almost worshipping material goods you want them so badly….

Oh.  Right.  Greed is idolatry.  And this notion that idolatry includes the “worship” of anything in life besides God is how most religious leaders currently talk about idolatry.  The Birmingham pastor’s sermon was entitled, “Tide, Tigers, and True God,” about the idolatry of Auburn and Alabama football.  When asked what idolatry means to us, last night’s high school group could only come up with examples of material things.  During that men’s breakfast group, the leader talked about the danger for pastors of making the church an idol.  The point is:  Idols are not just Zeus and Aphrodite.  Idols are the job that consumes your every waking moment, the latest barefoot-simulation shoe that you must have (guilty), the latest Apple device that makes life not worth living if you don’t get it for your birthday…

So idolatry, in this broad interpretation, might pertain to our everyday lives.  But I still find the thought problematic that God is so egotistical that a little competition constitutes the greatest problem in the world.  Why does idolatry beat out all of the other religious instruction that seems to matter so much more?

I badly want to hear your thoughts on this, but for now, I have a couple guesses:  

1.  It’s not all about God.  I do not mean that religion or the world or life is not all about God – I tend to believe it is.  I’m talking about this particular commandment.  I think it might have more to do with us and the way we operate.  More to do with that which gives fulfillment and meaning and depth to our lives.  Those barefoot running shoes I ordered sure didn’t do it, and as much as I love him, I don’t think Phil Dunphy found eternal purpose in the iPad.

Maybe the prohibition against idolatry has more to do with recognizing that material goods can only cover up wounded souls for so long.  This is one place I think the rest of us have a lot to learn from the Buddha that gave up royalty to find meaning in a life of poverty.  Or the Jesus that turned away a man because he was unwilling to give up his possessions.

At the same time, this focus on individual fulfillment reeks of self-centeredness.  Maybe there are other possibilities…

2.  It’s about what we can accomplish once we give up our idols.  This would explain why idolatry comes first in the commandments – after all, why follow eight other rules of a god to whom you are not fully committed?  Perhaps it takes that initial decision to set aside everything else that demands our attention before we can really do the hard work of enacting God’s love on earth.

It makes even more sense when I think of my own life.  At times when thoughts of tuition money and material possessions fill my head, homelessness or a friend’s illness move to the back-burner.  In those moments when I can turn my focus away from stuff and back to God, on the other hand, only a second passes before I realize how much energy I could put into problems that matter.  Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses, but I think today’s drug of choice is materialism.

Is materialism/consumerism a form of idolatry?

Are all desires for material things inherently bad?

Does idolatry even matter to you in the first place?

Let me know.