On Idolatry

[Rebbe]

BRI International Internet Yeshiva Parashah Notes, August 2011

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"I teach nothing new but all things original" -- Rebbe

ON IDOLATRY

Idolatry is at the very core of human nature. This is because human beings are sinful creatures. We were created sinful. Adam and Eve were created with a human nature (we Jews call it the yetzer hara -- the evil inclination which the Lord Yeshua spoke about in Matthew 15.19; Mark 7.21) that was to dictate their every whim and fancy and to oversee and direct every decision that could ever be made. This is the prime reason why Adam and Eve fell in Gan Eden. Well, really, when you think about it they didn't fall so much as they were pushed.

The priestly John summed up human nature in his first (surviving) letter. John tells us specifically in 1 John 2.16 that humans are dominated by...
 
FIRSTLY, "the lust of the flesh." Certainly the lust of the flesh applies to Eve for the Genesis account informs us that she realised that the fruit "was good for food" (Gen 3.6).

SECONDLY, "the lust of the eyes." Eve had this problem too, for she considered that the fruit "was pleasant to the eyes" (Gen 3.6)

THIRDLY, "the pride of life." Again, the tree is stated to have been comprised of the essentials of "evil" as well as "good" and as such "was desired to make one wise" (Gen 3.6). If this is not a factor in the "pride of life" then, pray tell, what is?

The circle of believers gathered around the apostle John certainly knew upon what Scripture he was basing his theology of human nature (1 Jn 2.16 cf Gen 3.1-7). Adam and Eve were created with human nature.

Adam's transgression was an essential aspect of God's plan of salvation. God's plan IS a plan of salvation. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A plan is thought out ahead of time -- meticulously -- before it is executed, prior to its actual implementation. Sin is essential for salvation. No sin -- no salvation. With planet Earth, God has no other plan. Without sin there would be no Saviour, for there would be no contrast, and language loses all meaning. Without enslavement to bondage there would be no opportunity of freedom and liberty, forgiveness, or Grace. Without darkness no appreciation of Light. Apart from estrangement, no remote possibility of reconciliation. Without the bloodied tree of Golgoleth there would be no justification.

I have said that Adam and Eve were created sinful. They were. They had no chance of choosing to do the good which God had commanded of them. They were made with human nature. They didn't create themselves. HaSatan did not create them. No human mother or father brought them into existence. God did. And God knew what He was doing. He knew they would fall. He actually desired that to happen.

Why? Because it was His intention and plan all along. God is not the Local Village Idiot who was caught by surprise when our first parents jettisoned God's salvation. After all, Mashiach is a SAVIOUR from ETERNITY (1 Pet 1.19,20). Yeshua is the "same yesterday, today and forever" (Heb 13.8). Without the sin in Eden there could be no plan of salvation! God's plan is a plan of salvation. God has no other plan for planet earth except that of salvation. This is because by Nature God is lovingly salvific.

Paul tells us in Romans 8 that the entire universe was subjected by God to atrophy, futility, bondage and decay. It was His intention to do so.

To illustrate what I mean in a simple way, please turn to Romans 8.19-22. Consider carefully what this passage of Romans actually teaches. Breaking into a flow of thought, Paul tells us:

"The anxious and earnest expectation of the creation -- all nature -- expects the manifestation of the sons of God: for the creation -- nature -- has been made subject to disappointing misery, against its will, and not by any intentional fault on its part but by intelligent reason of him who has subjected the same, in hope that the creation -- nature -- itself also shall be ultimately set free from the bondage of corruption and decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation -- all of nature -- groans together and travails in labor contractions together until now. All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth contractions. But it's not only around us; it's located deep within us" (Tentative BRI/IMCF version).

Listen! People do not become thieves because they steal. They steal because they are thieves.

Likewise, people murder because they are murderers. We hate because our hearts are filled with loathing of others. We commit adultery because we are adulterers. This teaching is a factor which made the teaching of Yeshua so radical when compared with other rabbis of the Second Temple Period. His teaching is so straightforward on this issue that none of us can miss it:

"From WITHIN -- out of the hearts of men -- constantly proceed depraved THOUGHTS, sexual immorality, murders, stealing, covetousness ["which is idolatry" - Col 3.5], destructive wickedness, deceit, unrestrained indecent conduct, a malicious mischief-working envious eye, slander, blasphemy, pride, a reckless lack of sense, ALL THESE THINGS COME FROM WITHIN..." (Mk 7.21-23 Gk).

Now THAT is a prime judgment on human nature if ever there was one. And it came out of the mouth of the actual Creator of human beings. So about us He ought to know! Trouble is most of us don't believe Him. We think we are really good people. I well recall a so-called pastor sitting at our dinner table (and I have mentioned this many times) moaning "I was always a good boy. And I've never done anything wrong..."

What happened to this man who was always pointing the finger at the shortcomings of brethren? He was already a glutton when it came to food, and he got swallowed up in his gluttony for other women than his wife.

We commit idolatry because we are idolaters.

Over and over again in the Torah there are repeated warnings against idolatry. The Talmud also teaches us, "The prohibition of idolatry is equal in weight to all the other commandments of the Torah" (Hor. 8a). Again, "So important is the matter of idolatry, that whoever rejects it [idolatry] is as though he acknowledges the whole Torah" (Chul. 5a). "Whoever repudiates idolatry is accounted a Jew" (Meg. 13a).

There are Jews today who are practicing Hindus (and are still considered to be Jews) and academic lecturers in fields condemned by Judaism.
 
There are Jews who are atheistic Woody Allen's and who worship at the feet of the exalted egos of psychoanalysts and other mental giants in medical and scientific advancement.

There are even Jews who have embraced idolatrous Roman Catholicism for whatever reasons.

And there are Orthodox Jews who revere the Talmud WAY ABOVE the inclusions of sacred Scripture.

There are religious Jews who revere an ancient pagan wall of the Roman fortress Antonia which ought to have been blown up in 1967 when the generals of the Israeli armed forces seized Jerusalem as belonging finally to their own people. Today it stands as the one major obstacle to world peace.

There are Jews who observe strictly to the dating system of a fixed and artificial calendar -- rejecting God's revealed methods of calendric calculations. Millions of Jews observe the WRONG dates in their desire to celebrate the meanings of God's festivals in his divine purposes and plans for the human race.

There are some Jews today (and many Gentiles too along with them) who control and dispatch to the entire world Hollywood's extravagant celluloid filth, corruption and perversity, filling the minds of impressionable children with immoral fuel to burn themselves to charcoal.

And there are Jews who exalt their Jewishness over Gentiles, proudly parading and announcing their Jewishness in T-shirts designed to attract attention to themselves as Jews.

It's all nothing less than idolatry. And God Almighty condemns it.

This in no way lets Gentiles off the proverbial hook.

Christians are on the same idolatrous level as the Jewish people.

If God vehemently hated idolatry back in the 9th-8th centuries BCE, in the days of the prophet Micah, I can assure you with absolute authority that the same God hates it as much today. Especially is it the case that God loathes what is today referred to as "Christianity"! There is no doubt of that fact in my mind. Christianity early became idolatrous. Consider this admission:

"No religion can rival Christianity in the multiplicity of its images. In some large churches, such as the French cathedrals of Paris, Chartres, Reims, and Amiens, there are as many as two, three, or four thousand statues; and in the cathedrals of Chartres, Bourges, and Le Mans, three, four, or five thousand figures on stained glass. Although quite a number of these are figures of unimportant personages, nevertheless we have here what has been called a whole bible for use of the unlettered. Next to Christianity comes Buddhism, which has covered India, Ceylon, and the Malay Archipelago with its bas-reliefs, and flooded Tibet, China, and Japan with its painted images. In this it has been imitated by the other religions of the Far East, including Hinduism... " (James Hastings [ed]., Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, VII, 1908, 111).

Christianity (or I should really say churchianity) saw itself as the inheritor of the spiritual mantle and torch of Israel. Yet today, the Christian church has become the most degenerate idolatrous religion on the face of the earth -- Hinduism and its various gods notwithstanding. Not only is this the case, Christianity even baptised heathen idolatry calling it sacroscant. Small wonder Jews cannot bring themselves to join the Christian church, even if they happen to be converted and do believe in "Jesus."

Just take a quick glance at Christianity's religious and festive customs -- born in paganism, almost every last one of them. Xmas, Easter, Lent, church attendance on Sunday... the list goes on.

With the advent of Constantine's newly formed Roman church the true Messianic assembly transmogrified from the people in a called-out assembly (living stones) to a building constructed from dead rock.

Instead of being the church, now we went to church.

Churches have been erected replete with ancient pagan sex symbolism built into their architectural masonry, design and structure -- figures and patterns of phallic and vaginal origin in doorways and as painted windows; some still continue the practice of ringing bells (ba'als) as did the ancients before them to summon sunrise worshipers to the groves (and most churches today continue the practice of having cemeteries located on their grounds -- hallowed places where nuns would bury their murdered babies which had been begotten by priests and monks).

Pictures of God and "Jesus" are found in Bible's no less, and cathedrals possess statues of the Lord or the apostles before whom sincere devotees lay in passive prostration or passionately kissing their big toes; Mariolatry is gaining renewed devotion, and I have personally seen a dangling "Jesus" in an ankle-length white frock and wearing sandals (with his arms outstretched) bobbing up-and-down from a car's rear vision mirror. I've even seen a tasteless "Jesus wall clock" made in the Philippines (where else?!) and exhibited at the Exhibition Halls at an International Trade Fair in Darling Harbour, in Sydney, with his bleeding heart as its centre piece and his outstretched arms as the "hands" to tell the time! Every hour on the hour the clock fails to chime but belches forth a loud and astonished "Father, why have you forsaken me?"

Idolatry!

The worship of idols is condemned in the Scriptures because it is a carnal substitution for the authentic worship of the Supreme Deity.

None of us in the Messianic Assemblies are immune to idolatry. We all carry an idol deep within our hearts. We do so all the time.

Time.

I'm glad I also thought of time. For over 32 years I have refused to wear a watch. I have not worn a watch for decades because I have been a slave to the tyranny of time. This is due to the fact that I was always scheduled in my mind to do this or that by the clock. One day I might start wearing a watch again, because I think by now that I have finally learned to stop watching the clock as often as I used to do so.

We all live in a global society today that is enchanted with time.

We are preoccupied with time. We are challenged by time. We are constantly afraid that time is always running out. We are oriented around time.

In a word -- we worship TIME. It has been the great idol of the 20th century. It is now the great idol of the 21st and final century.
              
I think that most people who have had a religious upbringing would have to admit that we live today in an idolatrous world. In first century Jewish thoughtform to be an idolater meant that what you spent most of your time DOING was the god you served (particularly if God was not paramount in your thoughts).

God took first place in the life of the believer. And, that is as it ought to be. Therefore, if you spent more time working at your job than being occupied with God in your thoughts, then you were an idolater. If you spent more time thinking about other things than about God, then you were an idolater. If you spent more time at play and in recreational activities, than thinking about God, praising and worshiping Him, again you were an idolater. If the Sabbath day was not spent focusing on God then you were an idolater.

The Torah answers a question which each and every human being has asked of himself: What does God want of me? "Only that you remain in reverential awe of God your Lord, so that you will follow all His paths and love Him, serving God your Lord with all your heart and with all your soul. You must keep God's commandments and decrees ... so that all good will be yours" (Deut 10.12).

The Torah is still crying out to us today, from its ancient pages, calling all of us to t'shuvah -- to return, to renounce our ways which are idolatrous and to seek a clean heart and mind from the Lord who created us in the first place.

For those of us who observe the annual Jewish agricultural festivals the September/October period is almost upon us. This is the time during which a special call from God to flee idolatry is emphasised. God the Father wants each of us to be a personal iconoclast.
 
Are we afflicted with idolatry?
 
It's high time to become iconoclastic, a destroyer of idols within the human heart.