Ten Words #2: Don't Box Me In

The second commandment is “Do not make for yourself an idol.” Idols. If any commandment is a slam dunk for us, this should be it. I mean, how many church members have an idol sitting around their house, office or school locker? And even if they did, would they actually worship such a thing?

This word doesn’t seem much different from the previous one. Some religious listings of the Ten Words combine the first two into a single command. So what’s the deal with idols, and how does this apply to us today?

Idols are symbols of divine power. They point to and remind people of infinite & imperishable things. Symbols come in different forms. They are powerful reminders of bigger realities. It’s natural to want to create & collect them. Companies create logos. Travelers collect mementos. Parents make scrapbooks and picture albums. These symbols remind us of bigger realities.

But there’s a fundamental flaw with symbols. They allow us to control things that are too big to comprehend. Humans tend to fear what they can’t understand. Instead of accepting that there are powers beyond our comprehension, we tend to want to boil them down and find ways to make them palatable. Rather than realizing that we serve a God who is beyond our imagination, we tend to look for ways to box God in so that we can fathom God and—if we honestly confess it—control God in ways that take away our fear and uncertainty.

Whereas many people hand their lives over to false gods—inadvertently or intentionally—many others seek to picture God as a power that they can manage as needed:

>> “God wants me to be happy!” When you view God as generous grandpa, aren’t you making God into a giant vending machine idol for your selfish wants & needs?

>> “God gave us his inerrant & infallible word to follow!” I’m sorry, but when you say that you know the “perfect system” for following God, aren’t you in fact creating an idol out of your understanding of the Bible?

On and on it goes. Our fears and needs provoke us to create idols, and these idols make us think that we possess God. And that’s just wrong. By contrast, in God’s own moment of self-revelation before Moses, God said, “I am who I am.” Simply put, God cannot be boxed in.

While we may not have little statues that we worship, we are still vexed by the problem of idolatry. Are you certain that you haven’t boxed God in? Are you letting God rule your life, or are your fears causing you to fashion God into an “idol” that you can control?