Idolatry

In our previous article titled: Do You Believe In Only One God we mentioned that the phrase other gods in the first commandment stated in Exodus 20:3 refers to the lifeless graven image people make to be their gods. It is clearly explained in the next verse Exodus 20:4. Then the 2nd Commandment follows, Exodus 20:5 thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Why should God command us not to bow before the lifeless sculpture? Do you think this command is just something to be taken for granted? Well, think again.

God created Adam in Eden as a model of what man should be a tangible material projection of His spiritual perfection in this physical universe. Adam was God's masterpiece, His best loved creation. So, God was pouring His entire mind, heart, His spirit and all His power into Adam. With this godly power goes the freedom of choice and the responsibility to choose righteously. This is the meaning of Genesis 1:26. All human creation must be patterned after Adam as envisioned by God. This pattern is now known to genetics as the code in our DNA. Adam was supposed to introduce DNA information of divine perfection. The reason why God had to create a model will be discussed in a forthcoming article. In the meantime we will explain why God commanded against idolatry.

What is really wrong with idolatry? Genesis 1:26 tells us that God is within us. Luke 17:21 affirms this. That means we are supposed to communicate with our creator inwardly, because He is inside. God is in our mind, heart and soul. We seek the Father there not elsewhere. He is waiting for us to meet Him within. Now, how do you look at a man with the living God inside who makes him alive, but creates a lifeless sculpture, calls it a god and bows before it? It is horribly ungrateful.

It is really horrible not only because it is ungrateful, but most of all because the psychological and emotional behavior brings death to man. In the preceding discussion we mentioned that we have the power of God. Genesis 3:6 and Matthew 14:31 illustrate how Eve and Peter, respectively misused this power against their godliness. In idolatry we are actually using the power of our mind and emotion to reject the living presence of God inside us and desire for a dead god that we establish before us. Our behavior means we love death more than life (Proverbs 8:36). By the enormous power that we possess, we draw our self away from life and therefore, bring death as desired. This is actually suicide.

One of the purposes of this article is to make obvious the truth that contrary to the teachings of some religious sects that death is the will of God and that we have to die in order to live; all the pronouncements of God about death are actually the will of man. God's will of life is transformed into the will of death by man's irresponsible misuse of God's power in him. It looks like God gives in to the will of man, but why? Obviously, (Genesis 1:26) God gave authority to man to use His power in this part of the universe in the same fullness of authority given to the angels to expand the Kingdom to the whole cosmos. God must not break His own word until man and those angels who rebelled against God realize and accept their own mistake. God knows that the best way to learn is to experience the consequences of those mistakes.

Man has developed the inability to understand that what he does brings pain until he experiences the pain himself. The better enlightened ones understand this. The less enlightened ones blame the pain to everyone else including God, except themselves. They are too oblivious of their past deeds that brought the pain and suffering of the present. Ancient wisdom calls this Karma. Karma will be discussed with Reincarnation in a separate article.

God does not want us to desire for dead idols and images of false god for worship. Those lifeless Gods cannot make us alive. Worse they kill us by way of our powerful desire for death and the dead. By desiring to worship idols we deny and reject the God in us. That is why the devil is conducting a relentless campaign to make us believe that we are not Gods, because if we believe that we are not then we lose our godliness. On the other hand, God placed the prohibition of idolatry on the second commandment of the first tablet because it is very important to the well being of our soul. The Son of God said: You are gods (John 10:34). That is why He was called Emmanuel (Matthew 1:23) meaning God is with us. Amen.

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