People Matter

 Seriously:

Jones: I want to let Speaker Johnson know.. when you put objects above people, we call that idolatry. And when you put the lives of people under money, and campaign contributions we call that idolatry so let's not use faith and false thoughts and prayers to gloss over this issue

“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

-Exodus 20:3

When you think about it a minute, that’s a rather frightening assertion of otherness. Exodus goes on to name and claim things we usually think of as idols (and we usually think of them because of the follow on verses in Exodus):

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 

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;

We tend to treat that as a comforting limitation on v. 3, and then treat the whole matter as either a question of material (where graven images come from), or a precursor to Johannine exclusion (“no one comes to the Father except through me.”) But this verse is not the Shama (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One “), and rather than be limited to condemnation of materials or materialism (the latter another, proper, level of abstraction), it should be read at a very high level of abstraction.

Jesus says, when the apostles come and tell him what people are saying about him: “Who do you say I am?” He doesn’t mean Joshua (the non-Greek form of “Jesus”) bar Joseph, from Nazareth. The question raises a very high level of abstraction. It’s the same level of abstraction for what it means to have no other gods before God.

And the short answer is: because God is not you.

If you are, or have been, in love , you know (I hope, I trust) that the inspired days of love give way to the quotidian again, and sooner or later love has to be more than inspiration and infatuation. You have to learn to accept your beloved as other; as not you, but of deep and abiding importance to you. The more you accept them for who they are, the happier your relationship is, even though it remains a struggle.

“Israel” means “struggles with God.”

And if you are fortunate enough to have been blessed with children, your own or those in your extended family (nieces, nephews) , you know they are “other,” too; and ultimately must be allowed to be themselves, for good or ill. I look back on my life and can only imagine the pain I caused my parents because of my decisions, and I never went to jail or went broke or moved back in with them, or was an addict or an alcoholic. Nothing so public, but my choices didn’t always bear fruit, and as much as I worry about my daughter (whose path is much straighter than mine), I can only imagine how they worried. But they couldn’t take over; they couldn’t decide for me.

“Israel” means “struggles with God.”

It isn’t clear what “other gods” are because it can’t be clear. It’s a question of relationship, not law. Societies need laws to order civic relationships. The relationship with God, in modern society, is a personal matter. But if you profess to trust the living God, the God if Israel, you cannot then profess to know the mind of God, or to know that your desires, are God’s desires.

And yes, that certainly goes for me as much as it does for thee.

How, then, do you identify idolatry? Very carefully; but from the understanding that God cares for people; not things, not ideas; except insofar as they serve, but don’t oppress, people. Jesus says the Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath. And making the law of Moses a burden, rather than a liberation, is twisting the purpose of the law away from its intended purpose. And abortion? Placing the unborn above the mother, reducing her to merely a womb? Where is the justification for that in the law and the prophets and the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. The original idea of “husband” was responsibility, not blunt authority. The husband took care, sought the best for what was husbanded.  But even by Jesus’ time that was perverted and distorted and what was a responsibility became more about power and authority, and in Jesus, as Paul said, (and so in his teachings), there is  “neither male nor female.”

And yet we insist women cannot choose, only the law can; and only the right law, written only by the right men. What idolatry is this?

IDEAS DON’T MATTER.

THINGS DON’T MATTER.

PEOPLE MATTER.