The Second Commandment forbids the making, let alone the worshipping
of idols. The commandment is very
ancient, and it comes to us from an idolatrous time – nature gods, gods of
hills and shrines, gods of fertility and of good luck, gods of sudden murderous
rage who needed to be pacified, propitiated.
All these gods exist also in our day in modern dress and are fervently
served. Our age is no less idolatrous
than any other age in the human story.
Rowan Williams has his own way of describing this. He says a secular culture is always facing
the threat of paralysing unhappiness and anxiety. Also, I would add, the terrible menace of
being bored. So we make sure we are
replete with idols to meet our needs.
Money of course… idols in themselves are neither good nor bad – it is
the worship of them, or dependence upon them, or obsession with them, that is
idolatrous. The Bible does not say money
is the root of evil, it says the love of money is the root of many kinds of evil
[I Tim 6:10]. Sport, lifestyle,
appearance, power… all with some good in themselves easily tip over into
idolatry. Nothing makes people so angry
with you as when they sense you are criticising their idols. Some Christians insist on turning the Bible
into an idol, seriously misrepresenting what the Bible actually is, and
inflicting huge injury on the church and on truth. It is called bibliolatry, and it is a subset
of idolatry.
And so in a real sense, for Jews as well as for Christians,
spiritual growth and understanding is very much a matter of taking leave of
idols – casting them to the moles and the
bats, as one Hebrew prophet put it.
The Second Commandment insists that there will be no other God but the
unseen God who addresses us through his word.
Visible gods, closer gods, more amenable gods, more exciting gods, even
dangerous gods, may seem preferable to this God you can’t see or command or
domesticate, demonstrate or prove. But
true faith will always be our response, our Yes, to the God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, the God Jesus called Abba, Father.
St Paul wrote that he, Jesus, is the
icon, the image, of the invisible God.
All others are idols.
Contemplative prayer then is a simple (but that does not
mean easy) matter of choosing to pay our best attention to the God we can’t see
or imagine, but whose word comes to us in Christ and through the Bible, and in
all the experiences of life. We choose
to take time to be still, silent and deeply consenting. In the Benedictine tradition it is often
pointed out that the very first word in the Rule of St Benedict is
“Listen…” In Latin it is very close to
the word “obey”. It is not that we hear
voices, of course – at any rate, I hope not – but that, having as it were set
aside our idols, having ceased for the time being to pay attention to them,
we are free to attend to God who is ceaselessly attending to us.
There is a word beyond ourselves. To be still and silent is to listen and
obey.
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