GOD AMONG OTHER GODS

GOD AMONG OTHER GODS

“I am the LORD [Yahweh] your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me” (Exod 20:2-3). “For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’), yet for us there is but one God … and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (1 Cor 8:5-6).

These two affirmations sum up the faith of the covenant people of God. The OT tells the story of the Creator of the world, whose character and purposes are revealed through the calling of ancient Israel. This God, known by his covenant name Yahweh (or “I am”) (Exod 3:14), is no tribal deity but the unrivalled lord of all nations and is active in the histories of all peoples (see, for example, Amos 9:7).

Israel was to bear witness to Yahweh’s unique character and purposes by worshipping him alone. This worship involved seeking justice for the weak, the vulnerable and the defenceless and rejecting the oppressive political and economic structures of Israel’s neighbours.

However, Israel constantly betrayed its calling by imitating the practices of its neighbours. Ahab established Baal worship as a national religion (1 Kgs 16:29-32). Ahaz and Manasseh practised human sacrifice in imitation of the worshippers of Molek (2 Kgs 23:10; Jer 32:34-35). Idolatry was widespread in Jeremiah’s time (Jer 2:28) and the people of Judah burnt incense to the “queen of heaven” in the belief that it would secure prosperity and protect them from foreign invasion (Jer 44:15-19).

While the gods of their neighbours and the great empires of the day (Egypt, Assyria and Babylon) were identified with powerful men like kings, warriors and priests, the God of Israel identified himself with the widow, the orphan and the foreigner (Deut 10:18). Thus, when the people of Israel turned their backs on Yahweh, or worshipped Yahweh as if he were a fertility god like the Canaanite Baal, they also turned their backs on the poor. Idolatry and social injustice are two sides of the same coin.

Idol worship involves a contractual approach to the deity: In return for the appropriate sacrifices, the deity is expected to give health, prosperity, military victory and protection from evil forces.

Such worship is thus about finding the right technique to obtain the end desired. True Christian worship, on the other hand, is our response of gratitude and praise to God’s covenant faithfulness.

We all come to resemble what we worship. The problem with idol worship is that it offers the work of human hands or an aspect of creation the worship that is meant to be given to the creator alone.

When what is meant to be a servant is treated as a master, it quickly becomes a tyrant. The worship of that which is inferior to us ultimately dehumanises us, leading us to see ourselves and others as objects rather than persons.

The biblical prophets unmasked the idols of their time for what they were – false gods. The impotence of the false gods was proclaimed by the prophets through a rich language of mockery and satire (Isa 41:5-7; 44:6-20; 46:1-7; Jer 10:14-15; 51:17-18). The prophets also taunted the arrogance of nations and cities that imagined themselves to be immortal “gods” (Ezek 28; Zeph 2:11-15; Rev 18).

It is worth noting that the patriarchs, including Abraham, worshipped El, the high god of Mesopotamia and the land of Canaan.

It is from El that they received promises and commands directly, without the intervention of prophets. The patriarchs responded to El by building altars and offering sacrifices, as well as in obedience and trust. The writer of Genesis retains the name El in the dialogue sections of the book, but in the narrative sections he uses the name Yahweh. He recognises that it was Yahweh who had addressed the patriarchs as El and entered into relationship with them (Exod 6:3).

The fact that God is referred to as El in Genesis does not mean that the biblical writers accepted the mythology that went with El, who was part of a pantheon of gods. God’s calling of Abraham into a personal relationship was an act of grace, a divine initiative. God accommodated his self-disclosure to fit the religious framework of the patriarchs, including the religious rituals, customs and divine titles of their culture. His goal was to better prepare them for an experience of his liberating acts and a deeper and fuller revelation of his character and purposes. This experience would in the course of time take the patriarchs of Israel beyond their ancestral religious framework. In the Sinai wilderness, on the threshold of the Israelites’ entry into the land of Canaan, Joshua challenged the people to get rid of all other gods and serve Yahweh alone in accordance with the covenant (Josh 24:14- 17). These “other gods” Joshua cited included “the gods your ancestors worshipped beyond the River Euphrates” (that is, in Mesopotamia).

It is the use of various names for God that enables us to affirm that the pre-incarnate Word of God has been addressing men and women of cultures other than Israel’s. He has been working with them under forms and names that Christians may find strange and even unattractive (John 1:1-3, 9; Heb 1:1). That, surely, is the selfhumbling accommodation of God to our sinful humanity. But this fact, far from removing the need to proclaim the good news of the crucified and risen Christ to all cultures, actually compels it. For if Christ has been speaking to human beings in their sin, his goal is to lead them out of what Paul calls (speaking to the learned citizens of Athens) their “past … ignorance” (Acts 17:30) so that they may understand and experience the freedom that Christ won for them through the cross.

Also instructive for Christians today is the biblical story of Jonah, which is best read as a prophetic satire on Israel’s complacency and self-idolatry. Jonah is the least attractive of the characters in the story.

“I am a Hebrew”, he declares to the pagan sailors, “and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” (Jonah 1:9). Yet he is blind to the contradiction between this grand profession of faith and his godless behaviour. The pagan sailors and the people of Nineveh show greater fear of Yahweh than Yahweh’s prophet does! They are the exemplary worshippers in the book, not Jonah. Yet it is to the latter that Yahweh has entrusted his message to the nations.

Thus, idolatry is not found exclusively in what we call “non- Christian religions”. There are similarities between the Hindu pantheon and the gods of Mesopotamia and Canaan. But the same idolatrous tendency is also pervasive in the “health and wealth” cults in many churches. Jesus repeatedly warned his disciples against the allure of wealth, which he personified as a rival god, Mammon. The most powerful idols are not physical objects but mental concepts, including concepts of God. When church worship is evaluated by “how it makes me feel”, rather than how we are transformed to offer Christ-like service to the world, it becomes idolatrous.

Christian witness should unmask the false gods of our nations. Nationality, religion and ethnicity are human concepts. When we forget this, we give them a power over us that they do not otherwise possess and we may find ourselves engaging in actions (such as discrimination, mass killings) we would not normally do. The pursuit of nuclear weapons and high-tech status symbols reflects the idolatry of both technology and nationalism.

Idolatry is also reflected in the elevation of business tycoons, film stars and cricketers to the status of demigods. Very little of the huge sums of money lavished on Bollywood movies or cricket filters down to develop infrastructure or improve the lives of the poor majority. As market forces increasingly encroach on every aspect of human life, human beings are reduced to “consumers”, human behaviour to “selfinterest”, and the worth of every human endeavour to “costeffectiveness”.

In challenging such idolatrous tendencies in our modern world the biblical language of demonology becomes relevant. Demons may be invisible, sentient beings or the spiritual ethos of twisted social and political structures. These malignant powers can “possess” both individuals and entire societies. When human beings give to any aspect of God’s creation (for example, sexuality or family) or to the works of their hands (science, the nation-state, market forces) the worship that is due to the Creator alone, they call up invisible forces that eventually dominate them. Having surrendered our hearts, individually and collectively, to idols, we become enslaved by demons. Such demons always demand human sacrifices. Thus, idolatry leads to the sacrifice of the weak and apparently “useless” members of society (foetuses, the landless, the unemployable, the infirm or the mentally challenged). It also leads to the destruction of the earth’s ecosystems, and the abdication of all responsibility for nonhuman creation.

We can never get away from the creation of idols and ideologies, for the human spirit hungers for meaning to life and does not find fulfilment in the merely material. Those who worship false gods in order to secure power (religious or secular) live in a constant climate of suspicion, insecurity and fear. The only effective antidote to fear is a vision of the One, who having all power at his command, humbled himself, embracing the role of a lowly servant to unmask and dethrone the powers that ravaged his world.

Vinoth Ramachandra