The Power of Idol Worship among Humans

According to Psalm 115:

The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the works of men’s hands . . .

Statues straight, statues tall, supporting those who fall, propping up those who feel down, giving peace without a sound. Idols “have a mouth, but they cannot speak.” They mirror the dreams of humans, and stone and marble give hope to those who are empty, lonely, full of hate, mind and body a terrible state. Idols are made with mouths, eyes, ears, noses, hands, feet--but they cannot speak, see, hear, smell, touch, and walk.

Let those that make them become like them . . .

“Beautiful idol destroy our fears,” their makers pray to their stone creation, “through clouds and darkness make it clear,” they ask, “tell us what is true, what is fact, how we should be and act.” Can stone tell us what to perceive, reveal to humans what to believe? Can stone tell a person if what they see is an accurate reflection of what they be?

. . . and all who trust in them . . .

And those who trust in idols say to them: “Tell me that you are real, that the confusion I feel, deep inside, within my being, is false, since not the same as seeing, the matchless beauty of human art, marble complement to the human heart. No need for God, no need for Scripture, all I need is a secular mixture of stone from the soil and the sculptor's toil--To produce a heavenly deity, wrought from earthly fealty.”

Rather than idols, the Lord.

They that fear the Lord trust in the Lord . . .

God is immaterial. God is not made. God makes. Human tries to fashion God. But it is nonsense. God “is their helper and defender,” the Psalmist says. “The Lord has remembered us, and blessed us.” The Lord blesses not only humans but the Creation as well. And yet He puts the Creation in human hands. Such an apparent contradiction has a subtle purpose, a truth, that evades the philosopher and theologian.

The dead shall not praise thee, O Lord. . . . But we, the living, will bless the Lord, from henceforth and for ever . . .

Stone is dead. The idols of stone, the dead, do not praise God, rather the living, all life, God’s creation not the human creation. The dead of life, those having lived, have the loudest voices of praise to the Creator of the Creation.