Idolatry
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Exodus 20:2-6
STORY
The canonization of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee began shortly after 5 p.m., May 7, 1890, on the docks of the James River in Richmond. That’s when at least 20,000 citizens clamped hands on ropes and hauled three huge crates a mile and a half up to the empty tobacco field above the city now known as Monument Avenue.
Inside the boxes, fresh from the sculptor’s studio in France, was the massive statue that would soon loom over not just the skyline of Richmond but the psyche of Virginia: the noble Lee mounted on his horse. It was a moment of popular acclaim that lifted Lee to new heights of esteem and helped germinate the growing perception of him as “the Commonwealth’s greatest son.”
Though for white residents, the time was ripe that Monday to turn out for a mass benediction of Lee and the war effort he led. Twenty years after Lee’s death and 25 years after Appomattox, veterans were beginning to die in growing numbers and Confederate honor societies were springing up to memorialize them. The revisionist “Lost Cause” movement was gaining steam, and Lee – whose reputation for rectitude made him an acceptable icon even to some northern whites – was the perfect “marble man” to change the narrative of the rebellion from slavery to honor.
For many white Virginians, Lee ascended to the very ranks of the hallowed founders of the republic: Washington, Jefferson, Madison. When the Virginia legislature got to pick two notable natives to honor in the U.S. Capitol, it was Lee, not Jefferson, they chose to stand forever with George Washington in Statuary Hall.
Lee himself would have eschewed such relics and rituals, scholars say. He spoke against monuments as irritating “the sores of war,” and his modesty would have made him chafe at hero worship.
DEVOTION
Ten Commandments, along with the children’s song Jesus Loves Me, are probably the first thing we learn in Sunday school. Well-known, but are they well practiced?
The opening two commandments, given to Moses on Mount Sinai, declares the omnipotence of God over all creation. As such, He is the supreme deity. Not only can there be no other gods before Him, in fact, there can have be no other gods.
This places us in contention with the eight largest religions beyond Judaism and Christianity: Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Sikhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Codaism. Their gods are not to be worshiped, nor can they be recognized. These religions do offer us some principals for enriched living, some moral precepts to be adhered to, and ideas to contemplate, but the gods of these religions are false gods. Deifying these gods is an act of apostacy.
Religion is a personal journey, and the deity that we fail to recognize is self-righteousness. We promote our worth through materialism and champion our stature with exaggeration. We glorify ourselves by bestowing upon ourselves unfounded congratulations. This, of course, makes us a god unto ourselves. The worship of self is idolatry.
Money. Status. Power. These are the gods that we succumb to, rather than bowing before Chrisitan scriptures. We have been able to expel some of our egocentric gods from our lives; though, most will never be conquered, only controlled, for it is the worship of self.
Idolizing ourselves has an intrinsic impact on our behavior as we embark on a journey of self-justification. We profess to be sinners, when in fact we consider ourselves to be sin free. We evangelize that Jesus died for our sins, though, we are unable to articulate a single sin that pollutes our individual life.
We can bypass murder for that is never part of our hemisphere, adultery is something we do only in thought, and racism is a deposition that we have conquered. What befalls upon you, and me, and those sitting in your Sunday class is: anger, arrogance, bitterness, conceit, coveting, envy, greed, lust, hypocrisy, jealousy, judging, materialism, pride, selfishness, unforgiveness, vindictiveness. These behavioral traits are bypassed as we pronounce ourselves to be a god.
Peggy Noonan was the speech writer for Ronald Reagan. She has also authored several books on public speaking, as well as being an opt-ed columnist. Reflecting on the emergence of artificial intelligence and the concerns we have for AI today, she wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal that was published on April 20, 2023. The article was titled “Artificial Intelligence in the Garden of Eden.” She expressed a concern that we must seriously entertain, writing:
But a small, funny detail always gave me pause and stayed with me. It was that from the beginning of the age its great symbol was the icon of what was becoming its greatest company, Apple. It was the boldly drawn apple with the bite taken out. Which made me think of Adam and Eve in the garden, Adam and Eve and the fall, at the beginning of the world. God told them not to eat the fruit of the tree, but the serpent told Eve no harm would come if she did, that she’d become like God, knowing all. That’s why he doesn’t want you to have it, the serpent said: You’ll be his equal. So she took the fruit and ate, she gave to Adam who also ate, and the eyes of both were opened, and for the first time they knew shame. When God rebuked them, Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent. They were banished from the garden into the broken world we inhabit.
A.I. tech workers are stealthily taking a bite out of the apple: I believe those creating, fueling, and funding it want, possibly unconsciously, to be God and on some level think they are God. The latest warning, and a thoughtful, sophisticated one it is, underscores this point in its language. The tech and AI investor Ian Hogarth wrote that a future AI, which he called “God-like AI,” could lead to the “obsolescence or destruction of the human race” if it isn’t regulated. He observes that most of those currently working in the field understand that risk. People haven’t been sufficiently warned. His colleagues are being “pulled along by the rapidity of progress.”
The question has become: Have we set ourselves up as God? This question extends far beyond AI, as it envelops all of our endeavors. We have deified movie stars, made musical artists into icons, idolize athletes, genuflect before politicians; as we do this, we self-righteously discount our unseeming behavioral traits.
There is hope.
The statue of Robert E. Lee, sitting 14 feet saddled to his horse Traveller, on a pedestal that reached 60 feet into the sky was removed on September 9, 2021.
In Statuary Hall, Robert E. Lee is no longer to be found as it was removed in 2020, replaced by a statue of Barbara Roe Johns.
In 1951, Barbara Roe Johns was living in Prince Edward County, Virginia, and being educated in a segregated public school, she was a junior at the all-black Morton High School in Farmville. Across town was another school, open exclusively to white students. The resources available to each school, and the quality of the facilities, were unequal. Johns’ school was designed and built to hold roughly 200 students, though by the turn of the decade, enrollment was twice that number.
The16-year-old met with several classmates and they all agreed to help organize a student strike. On April 23, 1951, the plan Barbara Johns initiated was put into action. The teachers brought their classes and left the assembly per request. She then delivered a speech to all 450 students, revealing her plans for a student strike in protest of the unequal conditions of the black and white schools. The students agreed to participate, and on that day, they marched down to the county courthouse to make officials aware of the large difference in quality between the white and black schools.
Johns had hoped that the strike would end with the county officials sympathizing with the students and building them a new school, but instead was met with indifference. For the remainder of the day, students picketed the school, both inside and outside, with placards proclaiming, “We want a new school or none at all” and “Down with tar-paper shacks.”
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), provided legal representation, taking the case through the federal court system, absent any ruling in favor of the minority students. Their case, Davis v. Prince Edward County, along with four other cases, became the legal case before the U.S. Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education. As Davis was the only case in Brown initiated by student protest, it is seen by some as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.
Let us worship the one true God of creation, bowing to Him in genuine humility.