PLGRM

In chapter 17 of the book of Acts, we read about Paul being “deeply distressed” to find a city chock-full of idols.

Paul has been the most devout of Jews. He says so himself. As the Best Jew Ever™, he would naturally be disturbed by “graven images” of the divine. God is beyond our comprehension – God is the wind (h/t Billy Graham) – so to be arrogant enough to think we might be able to engrave an image of something divine was not only blasphemous, it was absurd. This had been the understanding among the Jewish people for centuries, so much so that God’s proper name was not spoken (which resulted in the pronunciation of God’s name being lost to history. We might say “Yahweh” but we have no idea if we are correct).

But I have to think, on another level, it was not just a deep-seeded religious tradition that had Paul triggered. He was smarter than that. He was a man proclaiming Jesus Christ, who was (as he later wrote to the Colossians) “the image of the invisible god.” For Paul, there had to be a difference between the idols he saw – the graven images of the divine – and his claim that Jesus was the image of the divine.

I wonder if the idea of “idolatry” means anything to anyone who is not religious, or, more specifically, Christian.

As humans began developing a sense of the “something beyond us” we needed to have ways of relating to whatever we understood that something to be. Places we lived and the people we lived with did more to shape those understandings than anything else, and these understandings got passed down from generation to generation and they started taking on an immutable quality. New generations met new people who came from new places. And when they learned about the understandings of these new people, of course they would be seen not only as deficient, but wrong.

However, it was really when the Abrahamic religions were formed that the formal idea of “idolatry” was applied to these other, foreign, false gods. The Hebrew Bible expressly forbade the use of images in worship and devotion. Christianity is descended from Judaism so a lot of tendencies from that one religion are present in the other.

Over the years, idolatry certainly retained its original meaning of worship and devotion to a graven image, but it’s soon came to mean the worship and devotion of anything that is not the One True God. For Christians, that is a God known in Jesus Christ, the Holy One of Israel.

As Christianity spread so did the idea of idolatry. Much of the early centuries of the Christian Faith were spent debating and deciding what truly represented God and what didn’t. Instead of primarily combatting the worship of literal, physical idols, the church now found itself combatting falsehoods and heresies about God. They may be called something new but they functioned as idols.

Here’s a true thing that has always been a true thing about idols: Idols are what we make them.

The religious language surrounding an idol looks at first, to be all about devotion and submission to an all (or almost all) powerful deity. But the truth is humans offer that submission for selfish reasons. The god in question is never one to be loved, let alone feared.

It might be said that this god or that can affect or control a certain part of life, but the interactions we have with these gods are purely transactional, and these transactions are designed to harness the power of the God. We don’t need the god’s love, only the rain they send. We don’t need to fear this “god” we just need to perform the rituals that have been shown to give us the result we need. And if rituals stop being effective, we only need to find the ones that will be. Our relationships with these false god idols are quid pro quo. In fact, to call whatever interaction we have with these idols, a “relationship” is to vastly overrate it.

And that’s how it works with the “idols” that are with us still today. We may not have little statues to bow down to, but we interact with our false conceptions of God in just the same transactional way. We are trying to “harness” some sort of power to serve ourselves. Our idolatrous ideas about God always seem to give permission or preference to the way we want to do things or are doing things. These false conceptions of God never seem to require any kind of change in us.

A seminary professor of mine called this idolatrous form of the Christian God: “Pooh Bear Jesus.”

PBJ is soft and cuddly and only wants to make me feel good. PBJ hates the same people I hate. PBJ thinks my current behavior and way of seeing the world is just fine.

PBJ will not challenge me or correct me. PBJ only wants to cuddle me and make me feel better.

Again, idols are what we make them, and they allow us to go on about our lives and consider only ourselves.

This understanding was, I think, at the heart of Paul’s “deep distress.” Even though Paul had been raised a devout Jew, to read his letters and testimony shows quite clearly that his relationship with God in Christ revealed to him he had been practicing his religion as a religion of idolatry. He takes great pains to show that Christ as set him free from “The Law.”

Whenever Paul speaks of “the Law,” he speaks of it like its an idol: an elaborate ritual undertaken for a certain result.* What Paul had found in Christ was something altogether different that transcended a practical/functional idolatry. His entire ministry was built around introducing this shift to others and this might adequately explain why his arrival in Athens resulted in a response of distress.

At his arrival, he began arguing with anyone who was willing (and probably several who are not!). The Bible says he argued with Jews, devout Greeks who were in the process of converting as Jews, as well as the Epicureans and Stoics. Basically, anyone who would listen.

After a while of this, he was taken to the Areopagus, the place where debate happened and told to give it his best go. Surprisingly, at least to me, he is entirely gracious and conciliatory, and he leads off with praise of the Athenians, for being “extremely religious.” Like any good orator, he knows how to get to the point he wishes to make so he begins talking to them of an altar he’s seen “to an unknown god.” This was his way in. Every other shrine and altar was attached to a particular God the people believed brought them particular benefits. Somehow, he needed to tell them about the God he had come to know in and through Jesus Christ.

Talking about the altar to “the unknown god” was smart. It was not only the move of a competent debater, it was solid theology.

he begins his speech with a very bold claim: the unknown God is the God, who created all things and rules all things. In essence, he took the general sense of “something more/beyond” turned it into a faith statement. He basically claimed but all indications point to something or someone we can call “God,” and, based on what we have seen, this, “God” clearly has love and care of creation at the center of whatever project this “God” is doing.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Why did I use quotation marks around “God”?

I think before we go on, we need to address this. It may have been shocking, offputting, or relieving to read that. Whatever your response, addressing how we talk about “God” is fundamental to the entire project of being a faithful Christian, who wants to learn about and know this “God.” This one decision sets the stage for everything else we do in trying to understand the Divine.

So let’s get into that next time, shall we?

*It is vitally important to note that the true and original purpose of the Law was not as a rubric God used to determine who was (and wasn’t) worthy. The law was given to the people after being set free from slavery in Egypt. God was saying through the Law, “I have saved you and set you up into a life of freedom and purpose. To accomplish that life, I’m instructing you to live according to a set of principles and guidelines.” While our Jewish siblings are no more immune to idolatry than anyone else, we must never lose sight of the intention of God to love our ancestors through the Law.