Divine Intolerance [part II of “Faith at Work”] 1/18/48
Scripture: Exodus 20: 18-24
Text: Exodus 20: 4a, 5a; “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image --- Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them.” (See also Exodus 20: 23; “Ye shall not make with me gods of silver; neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold.”
Obviously we give more serious attention to some of the commandments than we do to others. We recognize the central importance of the first. We assent to the value of the virtues of truth and purity; we abhor theft and murder.
But the second commandment may seem obsolete to many “moderns,” or at any rate the least valuable of the ten. It seems to deal with idolatry. And we have not been tempted to worship wood, stone or metal images for generations. And so the commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image --- Thou shalt not bow down thyself to themm nor serve them” -- seems to have very little connection with our situation. One may very well ask, “How does an ancient command against the worship of idols have anything to do with our time?”
One of the first matters which might catch our attention is the space given to this second commandment in the book of Exodus. If it seems trivial or obsolete to us, it was not so for its time; for more space is given to it than to any other except the fourth. Murder and theft are dealt with in four words each. But idolatry has three lengthy verses of elaboration -- 90 words or more.
Furthermore, the Bible writers mention it more than any other commandment. If we are wise, we will not take lightly a matter that was so deeply important to those whom we have reason to respect.
The prophets of Israel gave terrific emphasis to the second commandment because it referred to the greatest single danger to their people. That danger was not one which threatened from without, but one which gnawed from within. It was the danger of easy tolerance.
It was the constant tendency of the Israelite people to mingle with their Caananite neighbors, adopting Caananite views and ways; compromising their own stern faith with the lax and even obscene religion practiced by their neighbors.
The Hebrews were not necessarily tempted to give up their faith in Jehovah, but rather to add to it, in easy fashion, that which would make their own religion a kind of nondescript synchronism of Hebrew and Caananite views.
The constant drift of the people was in the direction of an easy, “liberal” tolerance. The great prophets were in continual opposition to this trend. They were the Protestants against the trend. They resisted, through 3 crucial centuries, the “tolerance” that blurs all distinctions. The prophets were not the representatives of their times, but were critical of their times. And therefore they were productive of new times.
The prophets barely won -- and only in the smaller part of Israel. Time after time, new fashions arose which included (1) the worship of Baal, (2) the worship of the bull as a part of the fertility rite, or (3) astrological worship of the stars, introduced from Assyria. The people seemed to think, “Why should we not be broad minded and include these apparently harmless rites with the worship of Jehovah? Do we not keep our own religion, at the same time enriching it with these other rites added? Must we choose? Why not have both?”
The prophetic way of divine intolerance was the hard way. But it proved the only way for the tradition we now prize to survive. We know well what happened to that part of the Israelitish population in which the synchronisms won. They disappeared! Theirs was the fate which overtook the so-called lost ten tribes. They were not lost in the sense that they migrated only to show up later some place else. That notion does persist in some quarters. [When the Kingdons lived in Hawaii, we learned that those native Hawaiian Polynesians who became Mormons were taught that they were of the lost tribes of Israel, now rediscovered. Of course there is no foundation in fact for that belief.]
Those lost ten tribes of Israel were lost by assimilation right where they were. Many of their physical descendants live now right where they lived then.
Because of the divine providence that raised up prophets like Ezekiel and Isaiah, the two tribes of Israel which survived, purified and preserved their faith for themselves and for us.
Now this has a definite bearing on our situation. We are not, of course, considering building a golden calf to be worshipped in this, or any other, church of our time. But we are in vast danger of following the same easygoing path of which the golden calf and other images were the symbol in their time.
Our time regards tolerance very generally as a virtue. Some regard it as the supreme virtue. This is not wholly evil. It may be better to be tolerant than cruel. But it is particularly dangerous to be tolerant in an uncritical sort of way.
Notice some of our respectable conversational phrases: “Each man has a right to his own view.” “A man’s religion is his own business.” “Well, after all, one religion is probably as good as another; we’re all headed the same way.”
Superficially, statements like these seem to have a certain validity. But they will not stand up under careful analysis. Does each man, for instance, have a right to his own view if his view involves violent subjugation of his fellow man? Is the murderous Jew-hater entitled to his own religious view? Did the Shinto religion of Japan’s militarists prove to be their own business? Obviously not, since their religion affects the welfare and happiness of other people.
“Freedom of religion” has been widely announced as one of the “Four basic freedoms” to which humanity should be entitled. It is doubtful, however, if we have sufficiently analyzed that assumption. Far too many people take it for granted the “Freedom of Religion” means freedom from any compulsion concerning religion, and let it go at that point. Too many think, and some say, that they believe in freedom of religion because they believe religion to be unimportant.
Their freedom is therefore not freedom to worship but freedom for contempt of religion as if to say, “I can’t see why anybody wants to worship God. I’d rather spend a day horseback riding, or sleeping or reading, or skiing or fishing. I tell you I’m broad minded on these matters. I don’t care whether a man is a Jew or a Christian; I won’t stop him. And if I want to be pagan, I don’t want him to stop me!”
That is the lowest intellectual level on which our contemporary glorification of tolerance appears. And it cannot stand up under vigorous analysis. Either God is, or is not. If God is, that is tremendous news and the reasonable person will make a tremendous effort to understand God’s will correctly and to make it his life’s business. If God is not, then belief in Him is an evil waste of time and direction.
We cannot make a decent civilization on the easy tolerant assumption that it makes no difference what a man believes. It makes a tremendous difference what one believes! What one believes determines entirely the character of his life and of the civilization he builds. There can be no cutting edge that is not narrow!
Our present stage of spiritual decay is shown in our preference to speak of “religion” than to talk of God. Why do we speak of God as little as possible and of religion as often as possible? Behind our shyness about speaking of God is a shift of emphasis which betrays a profound uncertainty about the ultimate, objective realities of life, and a corresponding tendency to cling to the better known realities of subjective human experience.
What we really tend to do is to worship the products of the human mind in place of the living God! And that is profound idolatry! -- just as real, and even more devastating idolatry, than worship of an object made by human hands.
When people fail to believe in God in a straightforward sense and stress their subjective experiences or their own findings; when they cease to have faith in God, but rather have all their faith in science or just religion in general, they have lost the true object of faith and turned to a form of idolatry that is weakening, in a world that must have strength for its salvation.
Our courses in religion, comparative religions, Bible as literature, and so on, offered in colleges and universities, may be enlightening, and are. But in comparing ours with other ideologies, if we lose our central faith in God, which is our heritage, we lose our vigor.
Religion is of various kinds. It may be unutterably lofty as in the words of Isaiah, or it may be wholly debasing. The priests of Baal were religious. The organizers of temple prostitution in connection with some of the religious practices in a south Asiatic country are religious. So-called Nordic Christians are religious. But they are miles away from the worship of the true God.
Our great question is not to be religious. Most folk are. But which religion should we prize and foster? There have always been more false religions than true. There are now.
There is a faith which includes respect for reason, which produces science, respects personality, produces true charity. It is the hope of a regenerated world now, as it has always been before. If taken seriously, it can do for our culture what it did for that of classical Greece and Rome - save what is good, while the rest must go. It will never do this unless we make it a burning faith, making our belief in God much more than just a matter of private business. It must substitute a missionary zeal in our lives for false and easy tolerance.
It can lift us, when instead of adolescent discussions of religion, we speak of God whom we have neither invented nor created, but whom we have come to know as Lord of Life in the tragic days in which we have been assigned to live -- the God who sternly condemns our idols, but Who loves us so much that he sent his son, Jesus, to be our salvation.
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Dates and places delivered;
Wisconsin Rapids, January 18, 1948
Waioli Church, January 19, 1975