On Idolatry

On Idolatry

" I would love for you to explain in a rational way why you reject worship of other gods."
-Ron Nakata

Death

First, let's distinguish between words and the reality - if any - to which they point.

Wittgenstein said that the map is not the territory.

The words are the map. The reality is the territory.

I'm just going to state what I believe without attempting to defend it.

I can, if you wish me too, but you'd probably find it incredibly boring. (I'd suggest reading, "The Denial of Death," by the late atheist Ernest Becker, as a good starting point.)

So, "gods."

Death is a problem for human beings in a way that it is not a problem for other creatures. Unlike other creatures, we can imaginatively anticipate our death and - due to our "fight or flight" survival instincts, seek to avoid it. All the time, consciously or sub-consciously.

I find there are three main strategies for dealing with death: direct combat and victory over it (the "kill the evildoers" response so popular in movies and foreign policy), escapism ("eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die") and the most sophisticated strategy, deal-making.

Deal-making says it is okay if I die if I, in some way, can be given a token of immortality: through achieving great wealth, being popular, having a romantic relationship, writing a book... really, it can be anything.

Ernest Becker calls this our "immortality project."

Something we do or accomplish or create as a token that will survive death and give our lives a meaning that transcends death.

The problem is, none of these are effective.

More to the point, their obsessive pursuit (as compared to more ordinary pursuits) of these tokens is extraordinary destructive of our relationships to others, to the natural world and, ultimately, to ourselves.

It is the One Ring in the possession of Gollum.

It is Voldemort's creation of horcruxes via murder to ensure his own immortality.

Their pursuit - again, as obsessions rather than as ordinary aspects of human life - is responsible for much of the world's misery and mayhem.

In the end, it really doesn't matter if you crush your enemy, live a life of indulgence or have grand-kids or a world-renowned baseball card collection. Death trumps all.

And everything you place your hopes of immortality in is also, ultimately, subject to the reality of death.

The objects of our commitment or loyalty or service or "worship" are themselves subject to death.


gods

The above is written in secular language.

But the phenomenon is known biblically as idolatry.

In idolatry, we dispose of our life in service to the god or gods that will save us, in some way shape or form, from death.

Again, these gods usually take the shape of the "kill the evildoers," "eat, drink and be merry," and "let's make a deal" strategies for dealing with death.

Biblical examples of these are legion and I will not bore you with them - unless you really wish me to. :-)

But they are redundant in the biblical writings and are remarkably consistent across the two thousands years of documents contained within.

Are gods "persons"?

Good question.

There are certainly gods (including God in Christ) who can be thought of in personal ways.

This only makes sense as us humans, as natural worshipers, are persons.

If we were cows, then gods would no doubt be conceptualized as Bovinity rather than Divinity. :-)

It is hardly an argument against water that we tend to think of it in a glass convenient for our drinking... we are reliably self-absorbed creatures and think of all things as they relate to us.

And that includes gods.

Having said that, there are many gods that can be thought of in non-personal ways. Consider the Force in Star Wars.

Are gods real?

That's another good question.

We can argue about the metaphysical or ontological status of gods if you wish, but - again, though it is an important question - you will be bored to tears.

We are still at the level of, "Why should I care?" rather than, "How can this be real?"

So, as a working hypothesis, I will rely on the pragmatic argument of, “What is real is what has effects." This is from the Gestalt psycholgist, Kurt Lewin, best known for his coining of the phrase, "group dynamics."

In short, gods have effects, whether the word "god" is used to conceptualize them or whether their dynamics work in human history through those things describable in secular as well as religious language.

Again, the map is not the territory and all I learn from someone who tells me they are an atheist is that the word, "god," is not part of their working vocabulary.

It tells me nothing about their relationship to gods in any meaningful sense of that term. (The same goes for people who tell me they are Christian. )

Stalin was formally an atheist but he had one, big whopping immortality project that pretty much gave him the tune to which to dance and which was responsible for millions of murders.

God in Christ and the gods

Christians believe that God is perfectly revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ as prefigured in the history of Israel in the Old Testament, as witnessed by the ancient Church in the New Testament, and as illuminated through the ongoing witness of the Christian churches throughout history.

This does not mean one can only find God in Christ in those witnesses but it means they are the standard for discerning God in Christ's presence in the world - all the world, religious or secular.

The prologue to the Gospel of St. John states that the entire world was created through Christ and therefore one should not be too terribly surprised when one discerns God in Christ in nature, in music, in mathematics, in our friends and family, a slum, a death camp or even a Freethought convention.

God in Christ is ubiquitous.

The differentiator between God in Christ and the gods is that while the gods deal with death through "kill the evildoers," "eat, drink and be merry," and "let's make a deal" strategies, God in Christ sanctifies death through sharing our human nature and participating in it.

Religious belief in Christianity is, or should be, profoundly realistic about the reality of death while celebrating God in Christ's transcendence of death and our potential for participation in that transcendence.

It sees the Resurrection of Christ as something that transcends death rather than as something that somehow "undoes it" though some allegedly magical means (such as do the gods).

And there is a differentiated ethic that goes with that belief: relieved of the need to kill, run from or make a separate peace with death, we are freed from obedience to our always destructive and often lethal immortality projects.

We can live in the world as ordinary, mortal people: nothing more and nothing less. And we are sufficiently released and relieved from our own anxieties to be fully available to the legitimate needs of ourselves and of others.

It is not a vastly different final outcome, I'd wager, from what secularists yearn for.

I just think they kind of share the "realism" aspect of Christian faith and add the "hopeful" part ex nihilo.

Secularists and the other world religions are not enemies of Christian faith. They enrich the conversation and I more often disagree with them on what they leave out rather than what they contribute.

The only religious or philosophical stance I've found in life inimical to Christian faith is nihilism and, to be honest, I don't think I've ever encountered an atheist who is a nihilist (although more than one Christian has raised my eyebrow a bit on that front, especially the ones that tend to appear in the media).

But, you asked, and this is why I reject the worship of the gods.

Don't know if other Christians would agree with it (although, as a major, accredited Protestant seminary has deemed my theology relatively orthodox, I'd like to think I haven't colored too far outside the lines :-) ) and I don't know if you would accept the argument as "rational."

But it has certainly been an opportunity to clarify my own thoughts on the matter.

In forty years of Christian witness I've only "converted" one person and, years later, he told me that was only because he misunderstood me. :-)

So your soul is quite safe. You won't become a snake-handler any time soon, at least, not under my tutelage.