The word idolatry is one of those old sounding words often relegated to the archives of history. Many of us don’t associate idolatry with contemporary culture, thinking of it as something of the past, kind of “Old Testament stuff.”
I think it is alive and well in our world today.
Idolatry is the worship of a created object or being, as if it were a god.
Idols in today’s world are ubiquitous. How often have you spoken to individuals who stand in awe and reverence to the gods of money, land, house, health, or occupation?
Perhaps the most insidious form I have encountered is the tendency to make God into our image. In effect, we make ourselves idols.
We all have been taught, and hopefully believe, that we are made in God’s image and likeness. We share in divine life. We resemble God in our ability to think and will the good for ourselves and others. We share in God’s creative power by bringing new life into the world. We have the ability to reach out and form intimate relationships and thus share in the Trinitarian life. We share in God’s authority over other created beings and things. It is God’s image that is reflected in us.
How often have you heard others try to give God human attributes (characteristics)? When we do that, we divide God, we limit God, we define God, and we place God in opposition to others and to God’s nature. God is One, and is infinitely great. God has perfect nature, without division or disunity. We cannot anthropomorphize divine nature. God is so infinitely different from us, i.e., transcendent, that we cannot comprehend it.
As one of my earliest theology professors said, “We know more about what God isn’t than what He is.”
If we fall into the trap of making God into our image and likeness, we fall into idolatry. We cannot create God. We can only experience and receive God in the divine self-revelation in salvation history, in Scripture, and in the living Tradition of the Church.
Yes, God is revealed in the daily events of our lives; we can come to recognize God in creation; we can come to know God in the lives of those around us, but that is because these events, these lives bear some faint resemblance of God’s image and likeness.
It is true that God assumed human nature in the Incarnation and Ascension into heaven of Jesus, God’s Son, but this is all God’s doing. God divinizes us in doing so, i.e., making us holy as God is holy. Jesus is God and (a) Man. With the Incarnation, God came to live within us intimately, closer to us than we are to ourselves. This is a reflection of the divine image in us.
If you really want to know God, look to Jesus and look to the Church, the Body of Christ.
