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SearchWhat are idols for? What is idolatry?
Question:
What is idolatry?
Answer:
It is written: "Ye shall hold no idols before the Lord Thy God." An idol is simply something that was made to take the place of or to substitute for the Love of God. Yet the more one looks at idols and the purpose for which they were made (death), the less attractive they become. For there is no substitute for God's Love. There is no death, and thus death need not be worshipped and glorified.
Let's take a close look at the topic of "idolatry." For whatever is held in awareness seems to serve a purpose until that purpose is exposed as meaningless. Life in God is Real. Whatever seems to obscure Life in God cannot but be exposed as meaningless. If you seem to have troubles with a brother or with a "personality" or with anything of this world, the following quotes from "A Course in Miracles" will be helpful.
What idols seem to "do" for the sleeping mind afraid of Waking:
"All forms of idolatry are caricatures of creation. Sickness is idolatry, because it is the belief that power can be taken from you. Judge not, for he who judges will have need of idols, which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself."
1. Idols carry judgments of self and seem to keep them away from their maker.
"See in the special relationship nothing more than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods before Him, and by worshipping them to obscure their tininess and His greatness. In the name of your completion you do not want this. For every idol that you raise to place before Him stands before you, in place of what you are."
2. Idols are placed before the memory of God, to shut God out, but they also seem to hide the Reality of Self as Christ.
"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh and then projected outward. This produces what seems to be a wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master."
3. The body idol imprisons the mind and glorifies death; it is essential for a "private" sense of mind.
"Whatever form of specialness you cherish, you have made sin. So does it seem to split you off from God, and make you separate from Him as its defender. You would protect what God created not. And yet, this idol that seems to give you power has taken it away."
4. The specialness idol makes everyone different, allowing the thought: I am separate and different from God. But it also leaves one's awareness in the illusion of sin.
"The lingering illusion will impel him to seek out a thousand idols, and to seek beyond them for a thousand more. And each will fail him, all excepting one; for he will die, and does not understand the idol that he seeks is but his death. Its form appears to be outside himself. Yet does he seek to kill God's Son within, and prove that he is victor over Him. This is the purpose every idol has, for this the role that is assigned to it, and this the role that cannot be fulfilled."
5. The idol of death seems to "prove" victory over God and the death of God's Son.
"All idols of this world were made to keep the Truth within from being known to you, and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you must find what is outside yourself to be complete and happy."
6. Idols draw attention "out" to the world with the belief that happiness is "out" there.
"You have made of your reality an idol, which you must protect against the light of truth. And all the world becomes the means by which this idol can be saved."
7. The self-concept is the idol. It is the false sense of "me," the little "i" and the world which seems to surround it. Power has been given to it and every attempt regain power in the world is the attempt to retain the idol.
"An idol is an image of your brother that you would value more than what he is. Idols are made that he may be replaced, no matter what their form. And it is this that never is perceived and recognized. Be it a body or a thing, a place, a situation or a circumstance, an object owned or wanted, or a right demanded or achieved, it is the same."
8. All idols seem to replace the Truth of Christ.
"In some way, you believe idols will complete your little self. They have the power to supply your lacks, and add the value that you do not have. No one believes in idols who has not enslaved himself to littleness and loss."
9. Idols are the definition of an incomplete self. Idols are believed to have the potential to fill up emptiness. Yet idolatry is the emptiness and therefore idols offer nothing at all.
"Each worshipper of idols harbors hope his special deities will give him more than other men possess. It must be more. It does not really matter more of what; more beauty, more intelligence, more wealth, or even more affliction and more pain. But more of something is an idol for. And when one fails another takes its place, with hope of finding more of something else. Be not deceived by forms the 'something' takes. An idol is a means for getting more."
10. Idols are for getting more - to see the One as split into unequal pieces who are in competition to get the most.
"Idols are limits. They are the belief that there are forms that will bring happiness, and that, by limiting, is all attained. It is as if you said, "I have no need of everything. This little thing I want, and it will be as everything to me."
11. Idols are a request for littleness and fragmentation. They are meant to replace the unlimited, abstract Oneness of God's Son.
"Behind the search for every idol lies the yearning for completion. Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited. To seek a special person or a thing to add to you to make yourself complete, can only mean that you believe some form is missing. And by finding this, you will achieve completion in a form you like. This is the purpose of an idol; that you will not look beyond it, to the source of the belief that you are incomplete. Only if you had sinned could this be so. For sin is the idea you are alone and separated off from what is whole. And thus it would be necessary for the search for wholeness to be made beyond the boundaries of limits on yourself."
12. Following from the belief in sin and littleness, idols are sought for completion. Yet idols cannot be trusted. Who could seek for idols and find the Eternal Love of God? Who but the Holy Spirit can be trusted to lead to the remembrance of Eternity? Idols will never satisfy God's Holy Child. Look not for idols. Do not seek outside our Holy Self.
In Love & Oneness,
David