idolatry

• bowing down before idols of selfish ambition

4:3.1All too long has man thought of God as one like him­self. God is not, never was, and never will be jeal­ous of man or any other be­ing in the uni­verse of uni­verses. Know­ing that the Cre­ator Son in­tended man to be the mas­ter­piece of the plan­e­tary cre­ation, to be the ruler of all the earth, the sight of his be­ing dom­i­nated by his own baser pas­sions, the spec­ta­cle of his bow­ing down be­fore idols of wood, stone, gold, and self­ish am­bi­tion—these sor­did scenes stir God and his Sons to be jeal­ous for man, but never of him.

• much based on memory of Nodite supermen

67:4.3The pres­ence of these ex­traor­di­nary super­men and super­women, stranded by re­bel­lion and pres­ently mat­ing with the sons and daugh­ters of earth, eas­ily gave ori­gin to those tra­di­tional sto­ries of the gods com­ing down to mate with mor­tals. And thus orig­i­nated the thou­sand and one leg­ends of a myth­i­cal na­ture, but founded on the facts of the postre­bel­lion days, which later found a place in the folk tales and tra­di­tions of the var­i­ous peo­ples whose an­ces­tors had par­tic­i­pated in these con­tacts with the Nod­ites and their de­scen­dants.

67:4.4The staff rebels, de­prived of spir­i­tual sus­te­nance, even­tu­ally died a nat­u­ral death. And much of the sub­se­quent idol­a­try of the hu­man races grew out of the de­sire to per­pet­u­ate the mem­ory of these highly hon­ored be­ings of the days of Cali­gas­tia.

• direct i. is when material object is actually worshiped

85:3.5In re­li­gion, sym­bol­ism may be ei­ther good or bad just to the ex­tent that the sym­bol does or does not dis­place the orig­i­nal wor­ship­ful idea. And sym­bol­ism must not be con­fused with di­rect idol­a­try wherein the ma­te­rial ob­ject is di­rectly and ac­tu­ally wor­shiped.

• consecration ceremony caused spirit to enter idol
• refinement of fetishism

88:2.4The ear­li­est im­ages were made to pre­serve the ap­pear­ance and mem­ory of the il­lus­tri­ous dead; they were re­ally mon­u­ments. Idols were a re­fine­ment of fet­ish­ism. The prim­i­tives be­lieved that a cer­e­mony of con­se­cra­tion caused the spirit to en­ter the im­age; like­wise, when cer­tain ob­jects were blessed, they be­came charms.

• sculpture originated in idol making

92:3.6Re­li­gion has hand­i­capped so­cial de­vel­op­ment in many ways, but with­out re­li­gion there would have been no en­dur­ing moral­ity nor ethics, no worth-while civ­i­liza­tion. Re­li­gion en­moth­ered much non­re­li­gious cul­ture: Sculp­ture orig­i­nated in idol mak­ing, ar­chi­tec­ture in tem­ple build­ing, po­etry in in­can­ta­tions, mu­sic in wor­ship chants, drama in the act­ing for spirit guid­ance, and danc­ing in the sea­sonal wor­ship fes­ti­vals.

• commandment not to make molten gods

96:5.5But it was truly piti­ful to watch this great mind of Moses try­ing to adapt his sub­lime con­cept of El Elyon, the Most High, to the com­pre­hen­sion of the ig­no­rant and il­lit­er­ate He­brews. To his as­sem­bled lead­ers he thun­dered, “The Lord your God is one God; there is none be­side him”; while to the mixed mul­ti­tude he de­clared, “Who is like your God among all the gods?” Moses made a brave and partly suc­cess­ful stand against fe­tishes and idol­a­try, declar­ing, “You saw no simil­i­tude on the day that your God spoke to you at Ho­reb out of the midst of the fire.” He also for­bade the mak­ing of im­ages of any sort.

• young Jesus › challenged the chazan regarding

124:1.3The most se­ri­ous trou­ble as yet to come up at school oc­curred in late win­ter when Je­sus dared to chal­lenge the chazan re­gard­ing the teach­ing that all im­ages, pic­tures, and draw­ings were idol­a­trous in na­ture. Je­sus de­lighted in draw­ing land­scapes as well as in mod­el­ing a great va­ri­ety of ob­jects in pot­ter’s clay. Ev­ery­thing of that sort was strictly for­bid­den by Jew­ish law, but up to this time he had man­aged to dis­arm his par­ents’ ob­jec­tion to such an ex­tent that they had per­mit­ted him to con­tinue in these ac­tiv­i­ties.

• young Jesus › challenged Joseph regarding doorpost parchment

124:4.7Dur­ing his last year at school, when he was twelve years old, Je­sus re­mon­strated with his fa­ther about the Jew­ish cus­tom of touch­ing the bit of parch­ment nailed upon the door­post each time on go­ing into, or com­ing out of, the house and then kiss­ing the fin­ger that touched the parch­ment. As a part of this rit­ual it was cus­tom­ary to say, “The Lord shall pre­serve our go­ing out and our com­ing in, from this time forth and even forever­more.” Joseph and Mary had re­peat­edly in­structed Je­sus as to the rea­sons for not mak­ing im­ages or draw­ing pic­tures, ex­plain­ing that such cre­ations might be used for idol­a­trous pur­poses. Though Je­sus failed fully to grasp their pro­scrip­tions against im­ages and pic­tures, he pos­sessed a high con­cept of con­sis­tency and there­fore pointed out to his fa­ther the es­sen­tially idol­a­trous na­ture of this ha­bit­ual obei­sance to the door­post parch­ment. And Joseph re­moved the parch­ment af­ter Je­sus had thus re­mon­strated with him.

• commandment not to make molten gods

142:3.12“2. You shall not make molten gods.

• Moses’s prohibitions made into

142:4.2The Mas­ter saw that his host was be­wil­dered at his friendly at­ti­tude to­ward art; there­fore, when they had fin­ished the sur­vey of the en­tire col­lec­tion, Je­sus said: “Be­cause you ap­pre­ci­ate the beauty of things cre­ated by my Fa­ther and fash­ioned by the artis­tic hands of man, why should you ex­pect to be re­buked? Be­cause Moses one­time sought to com­bat idol­a­try and the wor­ship of false gods, why should all men frown upon the re­pro­duc­tion of grace and beauty? I say to you, Flav­ius, Moses’ chil­dren have mis­un­der­stood him, and now do they make false gods of even his pro­hi­bi­tions of im­ages and the like­ness of things in heaven and on earth. But even if Moses taught such re­stric­tions to the dark­ened minds of those days, what has that to do with this day when the Fa­ther in heaven is re­vealed as the uni­ver­sal Spirit Ruler over all? And, Flav­ius, I de­clare that in the com­ing king­dom they shall no longer teach, ‘Do not wor­ship this and do not wor­ship that’; no longer shall they con­cern them­selves with com­mands to re­frain from this and take care not to do that, but rather shall all be con­cerned with one su­preme duty. And this duty of man is ex­pressed in two great priv­i­leges: sin­cere wor­ship of the in­fi­nite Cre­ator, the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, and lov­ing ser­vice be­stowed upon one’s fel­low men. If you love your neigh­bor as you love your­self, you re­ally know that you are a son of God.

142:4.3“In an age when my Fa­ther was not well un­der­stood, Moses was jus­ti­fied in his at­tempts to with­stand idol­a­try, but in the com­ing age the Fa­ther will have been re­vealed in the life of the Son; and this new rev­e­la­tion of God will make it for­ever un­nec­es­sary to con­fuse the Cre­ator Fa­ther with idols of stone or im­ages of gold and sil­ver. Hence­forth, in­tel­li­gent men may en­joy the trea­sures of art with­out con­fus­ing such ma­te­rial ap­pre­ci­a­tion of beauty with the wor­ship and ser­vice of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise, the God of all things and all be­ings.”

• spirits cannot dwell within idols

150:3.108. The spir­its of good or evil can­not dwell within ma­te­rial sym­bols of clay, wood, or metal; idols are noth­ing more than the ma­te­rial of which they are made.

• sacrifice cherished idols

158:8.1En­ter­ing Ca­per­naum at twi­light, they went by un­fre­quented thor­ough­fares di­rectly to the home of Si­mon Pe­ter for their evening meal. While David Zeb­e­dee made ready to take them across the lake, they lin­gered at Si­mon’s house, and Je­sus, look­ing up at Pe­ter and the other apos­tles, asked: “As you walked along to­gether this af­ter­noon, what was it that you talked about so earnestly among your­selves?” The apos­tles held their peace be­cause many of them had con­tin­ued the dis­cus­sion be­gun at Mount Her­mon as to what po­si­tions they were to have in the com­ing king­dom; who should be the great­est, and so on. Je­sus, know­ing what it was that oc­cu­pied their thoughts that day, beck­oned to one of Pe­ter’s lit­tle ones and, set­ting the child down among them, said: “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, ex­cept you turn about and be­come more like this child, you will make lit­tle prog­ress in the king­dom of heaven. Whoso­ever shall hum­ble him­self and be­come as this lit­tle one, the same shall be­come great­est in the king­dom of heaven. And whoso re­ceives such a lit­tle one re­ceives me. And they who re­ceive me re­ceive also Him who sent me. If you would be first in the king­dom, seek to min­is­ter these good truths to your breth­ren in the flesh. But whoso­ever causes one of these lit­tle ones to stum­ble, it would be bet­ter for him if a mill­stone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea. If the things you do with your hands, or the things you see with your eyes give of­fense in the prog­ress of the king­dom, sac­ri­fice these cher­ished idols, for it is bet­ter to en­ter the king­dom mi­nus many of the beloved things of life rather than to cling to these idols and find your­self shut out of the king­dom. But most of all, see that you de­spise not one of these lit­tle ones, for their an­gels do al­ways be­hold the faces of the heav­enly hosts.”

• Jews’ prejudice against images

185:1.3Pi­late’s dis­fa­vor with the Jews came about as a re­sult of a num­ber of un­for­tu­nate en­coun­ters. First, he failed to take se­ri­ously their deep-seated prej­u­dice against all im­ages as sym­bols of idol wor­ship. There­fore he per­mit­ted his sol­diers to en­ter Je­ru­sa­lem with­out re­mov­ing the im­ages of Cae­sar from their ban­ners, as had been the prac­tice of the Ro­man sol­diers un­der his pre­de­ces­sor. A large dep­u­ta­tion of Jews waited upon Pi­late for five days, im­plor­ing him to have these im­ages re­moved from the mil­i­tary stan­dards. He flatly re­fused to grant their pe­ti­tion and threat­ened them with in­stant death. Pi­late, him­self be­ing a skep­tic, did not un­der­stand that men of strong re­li­gious feel­ings will not hes­i­tate to die for their re­li­gious con­vic­tions; and there­fore was he dis­mayed when these Jews drew them­selves up de­fi­antly be­fore his palace, bowed their faces to the ground, and sent word that they were ready to die. Pi­late then re­al­ized that he had made a threat which he was un­will­ing to carry out. He sur­ren­dered, or­dered the im­ages re­moved from the stan­dards of his sol­diers in Je­ru­sa­lem, and found him­self from that day on to a large ex­tent sub­ject to the whims of the Jew­ish lead­ers, who had in this way dis­cov­ered his weak­ness in mak­ing threats which he feared to ex­e­cute.

185:1.4Pi­late sub­se­quently de­ter­mined to re­gain this lost pres­tige and ac­cord­ingly had the shields of the em­peror, such as were com­monly used in Cae­sar wor­ship, put up on the walls of Herod’s palace in Je­ru­sa­lem. When the Jews protested, he was adamant. When he re­fused to lis­ten to their protests, they promptly ap­pealed to Rome, and the em­peror as promptly or­dered the of­fend­ing shields re­moved. And then was Pi­late held in even lower es­teem than be­fore.