Reflection - Idols

By Steve Hall

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/041021.cfm
Ezekiel 36:16-28
Acts 4:13-21
Mark 16:9-15

There are times when the Word can be quite insistent, refusing to be passed over or ignored. I found the seventh reading at the Easter Vigil Mass to be such a tenacious Word, repeatedly returning to my thoughts in the days that followed. The following is a portion of that text from Ezekiel.

Son of man, when the house of Israel lived in their land,
they defiled it by their conduct and deeds.
[by] the blood that they poured out on the ground,
and because they defiled it with idols.
[But now] I will sprinkle clean water upon you
to cleanse you from all your impurities,
and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you,
taking from your bodies your stony hearts
and giving you natural hearts.
I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes,
careful to observe my decrees.
You shall live in the land I gave your fathers;
you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
(Ezekiel 36:16-28)

Ezekiel’s words reminded me that the intimate relationship between God and man that our Father had persisted in trying to restore ever since the fall of Adam, had just as persistently been disregarded by humankind. Even before Moses was able to return from the mountain with the Commandments the people had already built an idol for worship. Time after time the Scripture confirms the lapse of faith among those he had saved and their return of idolatry. It’s a major problem throughout the period of the Judges. By the time of King Solomon’s final years, the king himself had established ‘high places,’ special locations for the idol worship of his many foreign wives. Chronicles dismisses one king after another with the words: “He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD,” meaning that idol worship had returned. Only with the destruction and exile of both Israel and Judah was true worship firmly established.

Something always has to come first; and with the Ten Commandments the first is first for a reason. It’s a simple command. “I am the Lord your God; your shall have no other god’s before me. But if the first is ignored or disregarded then not a single one of the remaining nine has meaning. If THE God is not our God then it is counterproductive to worry about taking a name in vain or what to do on a particular day. Likewise, the remaining seven immediately fall to the level of social etiquette. Not killing, not coveting, not engaging in adultery along with the other four are worthwhile only insofar as they keep society stable and ourselves out of trouble. Morality describes human relationships, not man’s relation to God.

Even as religious institutions shrink, the majority of our population still acknowledge a ‘God.’ The question is, as it always has been, what ‘God,’ or what sort of ‘God’ is being acknowledged? Some peculiar things have managed to achieve divine status, some explicitly and some not. We may joke about it — “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” — but the divine is minimized and even mocked with statements like these. If this question is not considered to be mankind’s most weighty question, then no other question of substance can be appropriately addressed. Even Jesus’ final instruction to the Apostles — “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” — is left empty of content. 

(To be continued)