by cult gigolo

Location :: Tinley Park, IL
Read Time :: 3 minutes
Bold Read Time :: 25 minutes

The number 1 commandment, given to Moses by God is:

I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from slavery in Egypt. Do not worship any other gods besides me. Do not make idols of any kind, whether in the shape of birds or animals or fish. You must never worship or bow down to them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not share your affection with any other god! I do not leave unpunished the sins of those who hate me, but I punish the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generations. But I lavish my love on those who love me and obey my commands, even for a thousand generations.  (Exodus 20:2-6)

I caught myself gazing upon this inscription and attempted to paint a picture of what this passage would sound like in today’s vernacular? I chose not to translate this passage, but instead bring color to an archaic passage.

What is fascinating about this passage is how sin transcends to <em>only</em> the 3rd and 4th generation while love leaks for a <em>thousand</em> generations. While many become depressed on sin’s ability to ooze into the next geneartion, God lavishes love 250 x more. Look again at the passage…

Sin = 3 – 4 generations

Love = 1 thousand generations

These are powerful figures for us to understand when it comes to the quantity of love God has for us. In addition, we should forge this practice in our lifestyle design.  Is the glass half-full or half-empty?

My first thought when thinking of <em>idols</em> was remembering American Idol and Ryan Seacrest’s intro: “This….. is American Idol!” (insert music – oooohhhh, ooooooooo, oooh oooh).

Another picture, which comes to mind is a scene from, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. During this scene, Indiana has captured the golden idol and suddenly falls through vines, trees, bushes and is caught by the local Indians.

While they hoist the golden idol and begin to bow down to it, Indiana Jones magically escapes to his awaiting airplane and sails off into the sunset. Typical day for Indiana Jones, but what about us?

What is interesting concerning idol worship is the similarity between Christianity and Islam, with respect to idol worship. Both religions are monotheistic and are quite clear of this belief. The Hindu belief has a much different approach, which you can read below.

Islam vs Idolatry

According to the Quran, idolatry or assigning partners to the One God (Arabic: shirk‎) is an egregious sin. It is seen as different in type from all other sins and is categorized as the one and only categorically unforgivable sin. However, this is not meant to be understood in narrow terms referring specifically to graven images. There are numerous forms of “shirk”, including subtle aspects such as arrogance and unbridled egoism.Depicting religious themes, and specifically God, is seen as inappropriate and unbecoming.

Hindu vs Idolatry

Hinduism neither prescribes nor proscribes worship of images (Skt. murti, or “idols” as seen by some non-Hindus). Striving for Moksha (salvation) ie. one-ness with the universal soul (Brahman) is the ultimate goal of Hindus. In achieving this spiritual progress “the first stage is the external/material worship; struggling to rise high, mental prayer is the next stage, but the highest stage is when the divine has been realized” [ref., Mahanirvana Tantra, 4:12]. The Hindu sages closed their eyes and meditated silently (forms of Skt. tapasya and Skt. sadhana) – they did not need enclosures/buildings, nor even words or mental images for their meditation. But these sages did not abuse any one’s murtis or call its worship sin. They recognized it as an approach/stage in an individual’s sincere spiritual progress guided by the principles of Dharma. “Would it be right for an old man to say that childhood is sin or youth is sin? …. Unity in variety is the plan of nature, and the Hindu has recognized it”. [ref. Swami Vivekananda, address to the World Parliament of Religions, Chicago (Sept. 11, 1893)]. This conscious Hindu recognition and the respect for different approaches to sincere worship proved useful to Jews who migrated to India (for trading or fleeing persecution by other anti-idolatrous Abrahamical religions) and thrived for many hundreds of years before moving back to Israel in 1948 (ref: History of the Jews in India).

Hindus do not consider it a ‘sin’ in any manner to use icons, images, or linguistic symbols such as the sacred “Aum” to represent the divinity. For a Hindu the human language itself is a symbolic representation of the divine, and so the use of words to represent the divine in itself is an act of ‘idolatry’ but not sin in any manner. Also, these images (Skt. murti), icons, and symbols are understood by Hindus themselves as being symbolic representations of various divine attributes of the Supreme Being (Brahman), which is ultimately beyond all material names and forms.^[4] Hindu iconography employs a rich language of symbols, and images are constructed to exacting proportions in an effort to convey particular religious truths.

The multiple heads or limbs often seen in Hindu art, for example, would be intended to represent divine omniscience and omnipotence, whereas the use of an animal icon would seek to represent particular abstract qualities associated with that animal such as wisdom, agility or power. Gestures (mudra) of the hand or the holding of a certain object are also heavily weighted with meaning. Each individual icon thus becomes to the Hindu worshiper a complex statement of faith and every detail may be a focus of meditation and spiritual insight. To fully equate the divine with its icons or murtis would be an Asuri (demonic) mis-construal of the Hindu concept of divine reality. The argument of scholars of Abrahamic faiths is that a human being with several heads or limbs is a false representation of God who is All-seeing and All-knowing. Hence they argue that such representations should not be worshipped. Further they argue that though God may have given certain qualities (agility,power etc) to various animals, they cannot be in any way compared with the qualities of God Who is the Creator and Sustainer of everything in the universe.

From a historical perspective, image worship (Murti-PujA) is an ancient tradition within the Hindu tradition, with the oldest extant images of the classical Pauranik deities allegedly dating from the Gupta period (c. 3rd to 7th centuries CE). Modern academic view is that in the Vedic period that preceded this, worship was primarily centred around the open-air fire altar (yajna-kunda) and no physical representations of the divine were used. A text in the Shukla Yajur-veda (32.3) reads, “Of Him there is no likeness (pratima), whose glory is infinite”. The Upanishads, which form the philosophical ‘conclusions’ (vedAnta) of the Vedas, repeatedly stress the formlessness (nirākāra, no material form) and unimaginable nature of God, and advise the aspirant to realise the divine presence inwardly. Bhagavata Purana recommends meditation on and worship of pratima (murti) with the understanding that it is not an ordinary material object.^[5]

The advent of Islamic rule in India saw dhimmification of the Hindu religious expressions and the persecution of Hindus. Hindu reformist movements in the 18th – 19th centuries such as the Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj were highly critical of image worship like the Semitic religions and called for a return to the ancient Vedic and Upanishadic teachings.

The use of icons in worship continues to be an issue of contention between Hindus and members of Abrahamic religions, whose scriptural texts often fulminate against idolatry. However, Hindus view the entire anti-idolatry plank of Semitic religions as an ideological justification for genocide of pantheistic Pagan cultures and the destruction of their symbols of belief in order to establish their cultural and religious supremacy. An understanding of the meaning inherent in these practises and the philosophical monotheism that underlies the apparent ‘pantheon‘ of gods would do much in the way of promoting interreligious tolerance and dialogue.

The Christian view of idolatry may generally be divided into two general categories. The Catholic/Orthodox view and the Fundamentalist view. The Puritan Protestant groups adopted a similar view to Judaism, denouncing all forms of religious objects whether in three dimensional or two dimensional form. The problem springs from differences in interpretation of the Decalogue commonly known as the Ten Commandments. “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” (RSV Exodus 20:3-6).

It would appear that both Orthodox and Protestant views of idolatry condemn idolatry as it is practiced in non-Christian religions as worship directed to spirits other than the Creator. The Catholic missionary Saint Francis Xavier referred to Hinduism as idolatry, and Protestant Christian apologetics makes similar claims about various non-Christian religions.

The Roman Catholic and particularly the Orthodox Churches cite St. John of Damascus‘ work “On the Divine Image” to defend the use of icons. He wrote in direct response to the iconoclastic controversy that began in the eighth century by the Byzantine emperor Leo III and continued by his successor Constantine V. St. John maintains that depicting the invisible God is indeed wrong, but he argues that the incarnation, where “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14), indicates that the invisible God became visible, and as a result it is permissible to depict Jesus Christ. He argues: “When He who is bodiless and without form… existing in the form of God, empties Himself and takes the form of a servant in substance and in stature and is found in a body of flesh, then you draw His image…” He also observes that in the Old Testament, images and statues were not absolutely condemned in themselves: examples include the graven images of cherubimArk of the Covenant (Exodus 25:18-22) which God instructed Moses to make, the embroidered figures of cherubim angels which God told Moses to make on the curtain which separated the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle tent (Exodus 26:31), or the bronze serpent mentioned in the book of Numbers. He also defends external acts of honour towards icons, arguing that there are “different kinds of worship” and that the honour shown to icons differs entirely from the adoration of God. He continues by citing Old Testament examples of forms of “honour”: “Jacob bowed to the ground before Esau, his brother, and also before the tip of his son Joseph’s staff (Genesis 33:3). He bowed down, but did not adore. Joshua, the Son of Nun, and Daniel bowed in veneration before an angel of God (Joshua 5:14) but they did not adore him. For adoration is one thing, and that which is offered in order to honour something of great excellence is another”. He cites St. Basil who asserts, “the honour given to the image is transferred to its prototype”. St. John argues therefore that venerating an image of Christ does not terminate at the image itself – the material of the image is not the object of worship – rather it goes beyond the image, to the prototype. over the

Christian theology, following the Great Commission, requires evangelism, the spreading of the faith by gaining converts, and the prohibition of idolatry sometimes caused hostile relationships with pagan religions and other Christian groups who used images in some manner as part of religious practice.

Fundamentalist Protestants often accuse Catholic and Orthodox Christians of idolatry, iconolatry, and even paganism for failing to “cleanse their faith” of the use of images.

Catholic and Orthodox Christians use religious objects such as Crosses, Icons, incense, the Gospel, Bible, candles and religious vestments. Icons are mainly in two- but rarely in three-dimensional form. These are in dogmatic theory venerated as objects filled with God’s grace and power — (therefore Eastern Orthodoxy declares they are not “hollow forms” or cult images). Evidence for the use of these, they claim, is found in the Old Testament and in Early Christian worship.

The offering of veneration in the form of latreía (the veneration due God) is doctrinally forbidden by the Orthodox Church; however veneration of religious pictures or Icons in the form of douleía is not only allowed but obligatory. Some outside observers find it difficult to distinguish these two levels of veneration in practice, but the distinction is maintained and taught by believers in many of the hymns and prayers that are sung and prayed throughout the liturgical year.

In Orthodox apologetics for icons, a similarity is asserted between icons and the manufacture by Moses (under God’s commandment) of the Bronze Snake, which was, Orthodoxy says, given the grace and power of God to heal those bitten by real snakes. “And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any person, when he beheld the serpent of brass, they lived“(Numbers 21:9). Another similarity is declared with the Ark of the Covenant described as the ritual object above which Yahweh was present (Numbers 10:33-36); or the burning bush which, according to Exodus, allowed God to speak to Moses; or the Ten Commandments which were the Word of God “Dabar Elohim” in tablet form. These inanimate objects became a medium by which God worked to teach, speak to, encourage and heal the Hebrew faithful.

Veneration of icons through latreía was codified in the Seventh Ecumenical CouncilEastern-rite Catholics still use icons in their Divine Liturgy, however. during the Byzantine Iconoclast controversy, in which St. John of Damascus was pivotal. Icon veneration is also practiced in the Catholic Church, which accepts the declarations of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, but it is practiced to a lesser extent, since Latin-rite Catholics today do not usually prostrate and kiss icons, and the Second Vatican Council enjoined moderation in the use of images.

Most Protestant groups avoid the use of images in any context suggestive of veneration. Protestantism from its beginnings treated images as objects of inspiration and education rather than of veneration and worship. Occasionally icons may be seen among some high church communities such as Anglicans, but they are not viewed or used in the same manner described in Orthodox doctrine, and their presence sometimes causes controversy.

Very conservative Protestant groups avoid any use of religious images, even for inspiration or instruction, as incitement to what they view as idolatry.

In Colossians 3:5 it states “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.” – NASB. In the King James version the words used are “fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness”. This expands the scope evil which is included in idolatry mentioned above.

I know what you’re thinking:  How does this apply to me?