Shelbyville Times-Gazette: Blog: You shall not make for yourself a carved image.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image.

Posted Tuesday, January 8, 2008, at 9:59 AM
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Ex 2:40

The second commandment is necessary because people cannot always keep the first one.

During the days of Moses a lot of people wanted to see what they worshiped so they would make something , even the Israelites did this with the golden calf.

People would offer all kind of sacrifices to these made up God's including human ones.

They would make golden statues of earthly rulers that they had seen and worship them.

God has never been a tangible being[Deut4:12]but he is always a Spirit[John4:24]

The complete commandment goes as follows [from the Jewish bible].

You are not to make any God's before me. You are not to make for yourselves a carved image or any kind of representation of anything in heaven above, on the earth beneath or in the water below the shoreline.

You are not to bow down to them or serve them;for I ADONAI your God, am a jealous God,punishing the children for the sins of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me but displaying grace to the thousandth generation of those who love and obey my mitzvot.

There is no actual separation between 1 and 2 in the Jewish text but were separated in ours.

We may not make a carved image or offer sacrifices but some do worship entertainers or icons in the world and sacrifice time and finances and other things instead of making them to God.

During the reformation the soon to be called Protestants went into the Catholic churches and took all the statues of Christ and Mary and all the others and replaced them with copies of the Ten Commandments.

I see no problem in pictures and statues for I have a few pictures of my own I just don't worship them.

We are not to worship God's creation or anything man creates about God but God himself.

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Think about how fickle we are about what we worship and how obvious it is that 'fan' came from 'fanatic'.

We might faint at the sight of a celebrity when he's in the spotlight but how do we react twenty years later when others grace the cover of Tiger Beat and People?

I suspect the performer Bobby Sherman has done more for the world as an EMT than he accomplished hosting "Shindig" but he,like other teen idols and sports stars,are meant to exist only for the pleasure of the audience.

Who they really are,their needs and worth matter less to the world than the "image."

The garments,gadgets,toys or other status systems we have to have today are ignored tomorrow because we don't look to them for intrinsic value but for how we can make them important enough to add to our perceptions of ourselves.

A real God who has His own reality and His own expectations of us is too much hassle.

A do-it-yourself deity is what you make it but it can never be anything more.

We want who and what we can manipulate.

What we decide we can't use,we discard.

Let us be thankful God doesn't act that way towards us.

-- Posted by quantumcat on Wed, Jan 9, 2008, at 10:49 AM