Idolatry

For all his life a man of many words, many meanings, Lewis knew that even in his prayer he had created idols, linguistic idols perhaps, and that even in this poem (“Footnote to all Prayers) in which he tried to capture the very thought of the idolatry in prayerful word was an idol itself…and a bad one at that, when he compared the one speaking with the one spoken to.
William Griffin on C.S. Lewis


I spent four days in a Catholic seminary as a delegate in the 6th Luzon Tertiary Press Conference; and in the four days that I was there, I appreciated the place because of its serenity.

I am a Baptist and as a Baptist, one of first indoctrinations I receive was the sin of idolatry and the indoctrination classes usually cite the Catholic Church as the epitome of idolatry. This is most unfair to the Catholics.

The Catholics have emphatically defended that symbolism in their worship, sacraments and Christian life is not idolatry.

I knew Baptists and Methodists who would rather be dead than enter a Catholic Church and I was baffled by this attitude because instead of seeing Catholics as a brother seeker of salvation, they are regarded as hostile enemies.

What is idolatry?

Deu 27:15 " 'God's curse on anyone who makes an idol of stone, wood, or metal and secretly worships it; the LORD hates idolatry.' "And all the people will answer, 'Amen!'


As I was reading some of the verses in the Old Testament about idolatry, I realized that the ire of God is in the fact that Israelite have the tendency to abandon God and revert to paganism. God is angry at idols because the idols take away something from God; they take away reverence in God; they take away remembrance of God; they take away God.
Idols and images have its conception in the mind. These Old Testament idols create images of gods, the images of gods that is in the mind of the pagans, these images are represented in graven images created by the pagans, these graven images are representation of the pagan’s lawlessness, immorality—the elements of the pagan gods and their idols. These graven representation of lawlessness and immorality creates a powerful symbol of lawlessness and immorality and this is what threatened God and Israel—lawlessness and immorality.


This where idolatry lies; in the mind that conceives of a god and the hand that creates idols that represents these conceptions, the worshippers of the idols and the worship and power given to the maker of the idols. The idols revert worship back to humanity itself—the creator of the idols. Idolatry in reality is not worship of other gods; it is the worship of humanity.


Is God insecure of mere sculptures? Is God angry at sculptures?

I know a Baptist pastor who burned all the sculpture and removed even family pictures in his house just to satisfy the Old Testament literalism on idolatry.

Maybe to solve the problem of idolatry God gave us the ultimate representation of God, the idols of all idols—Jesus Christ, the Word, the concept of God in a graven image sculpted by the Holy Spirit. The Cosmic Idol.




As I was exploring the Catholic Seminary, I saw moss covered crosses in threes, its footings covered with flowers, in the seminary’s ground. And in the quiet solitude of my exploring, instead of being offended by the crosses, I felt attuned to the Divinity.

What if these idols and images bring one closer to God? What if these idols and images are representation of how one felt about God? What if it brings reverence to God? What if the element that created these graven images is order, godliness, holiness etc


Col 3:5 You must put to death, then, the earthly desires at work in you, such as sexual immorality, indecency, lust, evil passions, and greed (for greed is a form of idolatry).

What then is idolatry and who then are the idolaters?

We need to create images of a concept in order to understand it, and this is what is wrong with the idolatry in the Old Testament—they are images of man and the wrong conception of God.

Idolater, spelunker, searcher, seeker, anti-matter, what’s the matter?