I sometimes hear people worry about idolatry, and they try to toss out things that they think they maybe
worship, like television or food or Facebook. Like other gods is simply a metaphor for anything that takes too much of
our attention, or gives us too much flesh pleasure, or that we turn habitually to
rather than prayer or Bible reading or worship. Like the Holy One might actually
become jealous of a sandwich. When I hear people conjuring this way, I start
imagining God in front of an enormous, bedazzled mirror, gazing at the Divine
Image, insecure. There is something fairer than Thou, Fairest Lord
Jesus.
I try hard to picture the
God above all other gods feeling wounded,
or lonely, or mad, or just tapping the foot
waiting for me to stop doing whatever it is I’m doing that isn’t productive or
disciplined or healthy, or isn’t giving the
Lord of lords my undivided attention. But when I do this, God starts to
sound less to me like my immortal beloved, the lover of my soul, and
a lot more like an abusive boyfriend. I try to imagine God mouthing the words, I can’t believe you chose a sandwich over
Me. What is it with you emotional eaters, anyway? You’re
never satisfied. Sometimes I get
guilt and I do say, Ok, God, I’m so sorry.
I’m sorry I wasn’t paying enough attention to You. I need You. Really. Look at
me, I’m putting all that away. Taste
and see that the Lord is good – I get it. Now, what was it You wanted to say?
But I happen to think that idolatry is really more insidious
than all of that. I actually think idolatry is very serious. It has to
be, because I don’t at all believe God is petty or insecure and because it’s on
a shortlist of things that Yahweh God is said to get very, very upset about.
It isn’t just graven images of other gods Yahweh doesn’t
like – He doesn’t want carved out statues of Himself either. Not of anything in
the heavens, or of anything under the heavens, or of anything in the oceans
under the earth. Pretty much no images.
I don’t believe it’s that God hates art,
and think it is deeper than just that God doesn’t want to be defined. I don’t think God enjoys us
holding up little pictures of Unknowable
to each other and saying, This is who He
is – No, this is who She is. I suspect God isn’t crazy for boxes. But I really don’t imagine that Holy God has more vanity than Snow
White’s stepmother, that God is in any way offended by our small imaginings of
the Divine, or that God cannot empathize with our deep, deep longing to grasp
for that which we are simply not skilled
to understand. We’ve been doing it since the beginning – God knows what to anticipate.
I think part of the thing so offensive about idolatry is
that it feeds our temptation to want to make God not be other. It fuels our temptation to possess and control the Divine
relationship we deeply love. It separates God into compartments based on
function, as they relate to our own favourite needs. It puts God into a role. It filters out all the things that
we don’t like or need or believe, and leaves us with a smaller, more manageable
being that shares our values, who’s actions we can predict, who’s tone we
understand. A God who responds to and reflects back to us all the qualities we
like best about our own selves. A God a little in our own image.
In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott writes, You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it
turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
I know I’m shaping God in my own image when God starts
exhibiting signs of Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Do not blaspheme My Name – do not say that I will do things that I
would never do. Do not try to invoke Me, like I Am a genie in a bottle. Do not tell Me what I can and cannot do.
You are not Me – I am Other.
Do not quench the
Spirit. I Am. I will be Who I will
be. But still I will draw you a picture – I will carve words for you on stone.
I will knit you an image of blood and bone, and make the words live. Word made
flesh – nothing lost in translation. Behold the face of Peace. Behold the face
of Love and Wholeness, Wisdom and Truth, Honour, Mercy, Grace, Strength and Sacrifice.
This is what I meant,
back when I said ‘Thou Shalt Not’.
Do not worship
splinters – love the whole of Me with all that you are, as I love the whole of
you with all that I Am. Do not form any image of Me – you are My image, My Own
reflection in the mirror. I am One and you are many – though the mirror
shatters, My image cannot be shattered.
Do not distort My
image by lying and stealing and cheating and wounding and gossiping and hoarding
and self-preserving and coveting, because these are things I would never do. But
be patient, be kind, be generous, bring healing, show mercy, pour out grace,
touch the untouchable, lift the fallen, cover the naked, defend those unjustly
treated, release the captives, guard the truth, strengthen the weak, walk
humbly, love – because you are My people made in My Own image, and because that
is Who I Am.
I crafted you from mud,
in the beginning. With My hands I moulded you, and with My breath I blew life
into you. I created you in My Own image.
From the beginning you
are the metaphor.
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the
glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to
glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. ~ 2 Corinthians 3:18
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