Idolatry

“The great sin remains idolatry, and there is an idolatry of concepts as well as of graven images.”—Thomas Merton 

Merton wrote this in a letter to his Muslim friend, Abdul Aziz in the 1960s. His writings on idolatry remind me of the Buddhist teaching on near and far enemies. According to that teaching, the near enemy is idolatry as we always thought it was: the worship of the golden calf  that stops at that golden calf. Easy. The far enemy is more complicated and insidious, and harder to spot.  For idolatry,  it would be the sort of idols that cannot be questioned (because of their holiness,  most likely, which we cannot understand) and which can’t be looked past. The far enemies, in fact, look like abandonment of idolatry, when they are really anything but. The idolatry of concepts is in fact a good far enemy. I think Merton was completely right, but I would go a bit further, and say that focusing on concepts is idolatry. It is necessary to look past them in order not to fall into falsehood. Here are some random thoughts that came up when I thought of idolatry, as Merton wrote of it:

First, all languages are inadequate. We need to know that before we can use them without turning them into idols. Words like love, enlightenment, or nonduality, even idolatry are only English words that point in one direction of truth. Cling to them too closely—even as something we are unworthy to look beyond—and we become idolators. Thus  the Israelites who began worshiping a golden calf while Moses wasn’t looking, may have been OK, as long as their prayers went beyond that object to something they knew but couldn’t describe. But I believe the Bible is telling us that most of the Israelites, in directing their prayers to the golden calf and not going beyond it, were doing  idolatry. No wonder Moses got mad at them.

I also think of the iconoclast movement of the eighth century, and later, the ninth, in the Eastern Church and the Eastern Roman Empire. Everyone was afraid of iconodules slipping into idolatry. But it’s not  as simple as that—that the iconodules were right and the iconoclasts were wrong. No matter what was said during the Seventh Ecumenical Council. It was more complicated than that. St. John of Damascus (a famous and eloquent opponent of the iconoclast movement) said that honor due the person depicted in the icon passes through the image to that person. If that is the case, then there is no idolatry. But if the icon itself becomes the focus of worship, then there is idolatry going on.  There were a lot of iconodules who were idolators. But the Church’s teaching turned out to be that images were OK, and worthy of veneration. I think of this whenever I am confronted with a miraculous image, icons of the Theotokos that shed tears and the like.  These icons have become idols, just as the iconoclasts feared.

I also think of the great film by Ingmar Bergman, “The Virgin Spring.” (I understand he did not like that film; I consider it one of his best.) It is about the typical Medieval saint’s life, with its idolatry, turned on its head. Bergman looks hard at the typical pious story and gets a vision of the God-concept that genuinely weird. The young girl turns out to be lazy and spoiled, and not interested in taking candles to the Virgin Mary for her feast. The highwaymen who end up killing her are also more nuanced, especially the young boy, who seems to know who the girl is and who her parents are before his elder brothers do. Then there is “God,” who is just confusing. A spring arises from the spot where dead girl’s body lay. The now kneeling people in flight to find the young girl’s body, at first looked like the garland of people shot in silhouette on  the ridge in Bergman’s classic, “Seventh Seal.” Now they just look confused. They involuntarily sacrificed a young girl, and all they got was this spring. Questions can’t be asked. We’re not holy enough to ask them. It seems that God was an idolator too. Max von Sydow promises to build a chapel on the site, but only after telling God that he doesn’t understand him. I imagine visiting that chapel a couple centuries later and finding the myth purified, the young girl saintly, etc. Idolatry occurs when we stop at an object, making it an end itself, and not praying past it. The saint’s life  model is good way of understanding idolatry in that way.

(For another hard look at a saint’s life that is a model for idolatry, and ultimately more positive, seeing something very holy in her actions, read my reflection on St. Mary of Egypt, [“The Harlot Koan”] at: http://davensati54.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-harlot-koan.html.)

I also think of Christianity, and especially of the Orthodox Church in the United States. To begin with, I don’t think any religion was meant to be married to the state. Just ask the founders: Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha. Oh, you can’t?  Don’t worry, you can look at religious concepts directly and they will tell you all you need to know.  If you’re told they can’t be questioned watch out: idolatry is rearing its head.  Questioning the concepts is something you must do. They’re not fragile. They’re not breakable.  But lately the Church is often seen as the religious element (there has to be one!) of conservatism, and the Catholics and Orthodox are letting themselves be characterized that way. I remember reading a parallel bio of Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor, and  Thomas Merton a few years back. It was great. But I remember being depressed when I finished it. They were four mid-twentieth-century Catholics, and quite influential. I think I was depressed because there is no one like them any more. The Catholic Church becomes conservative and, thus, idolatrous. The Orthodox are following suit.  The evangelicals are allowed to find a home there. It’s said to be the place where nothing ever changes. This is untrue. The main OCA seminary has been taken over by them, with Fr. Chad Hatfield at the helm.  They next have their sights set on the Greeks. I believe Greeks are not ready for them.

The great Isaac of Syria (seventh century) said,

“We can have only simple knowledge of God, beyond all words, ideas, colors, and pictures, and this ignorance is greater than all knowledge.” Beautiful.  Given that he was a monk, I assume that he knew all the Christian forms very well. He must have chanted them daily. Even multiple times daily.  and he felt no contradiction. Nor should he have. Praying—going past the objects and venerating them all along with understanding them to be inadequate, saved him from idolatry. It saves us, too.