| IDOLATRY |
| It still flourishes, even without statues. |
| "They have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods." 19:4 |
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| Suppose you found a friend carving a small statue out of a piece of wood. "What are you going to do with that?" you ask. "I'm going to worship it," he says. "I've got a nice spot in my bedroom where I can kneel down and ask it for things." Or imagine people on a suburban street pooling their wedding rings and other jewelry to make a statue they can put in the park. They plan to kill animals and leave the meat out in front of the statue. To moderns, idolatry is as weird as cannibalism; we're not tempted to try it. But since a great part of the Old Testament is concerned with idolatry, we need to get some idea of what people saw in it - and why God condemned it. Mixing Religions In Jeremiah's day, practically everybody practiced idolatry. Israelites had a hard time seeing that a few statues interfered with their relationship with the one true God. They worshipped the God of Abraham, but mixed in the gods of countries surrounding them. They had idols right in the Jerusalem temple (7:30). They could go to worhip God right after burning incense to Baal (7:9-10). They had built shrines on top of many hills - the "high places" - and under the tallest trees so that worship could be carried out conveniently, without a trip to Jerusalem. They ignored the prophets' warnings that God hated this "mixed" religion. Judah's neighbors believed in many gods, each having its sphere of influence. The Jews themselved had begun to wonder: why should their God be so different? Why should he want to knock out all competition? If idols were a fraud, mere carvings (10:4), why should God worry about them? |