The Ten Commandments: No Other Gods …
The first commandment appears in Exodus 20:2-3 and Deuteronomy 5:6-7.
Exodus states “I am the Lord your God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
Deuteronomy states “I am the Lord your God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods before me.”
In giving His Law, the first thing God does is identify Himself, not merely with His Name, but with His already manifest power: “I brought you out of Egypt, out of…bondage.” This identification gives credence to His claim to be their God, and it gives a firm basis for the command to have no other gods before Him. The Egyptian bondage is often considered a picture of sin. Thus, for Christians, God has delivered us from our bondage to sin, and we, therefore, owe Him our worship and allegiance. It is interesting to compare this idea with the Chinese tradition that if another person saved your life, you were honour-bound to serve that person until your death.
Some have tried to interpret the phrase “before me” as meaning “ahead of me;” in other words, this God must be first and foremost, though there may be other gods that you worship. Such an interpretation is wrong. A literal rendering of the Hebrew would translate “before me” as “in front of my face” or “in my presence,” thus there is no possibility of any other gods taking a lesser place than this God in a person’s life. God, and God alone, is to be worshiped.
Modern people, for the most part, do not worship images or man-made gods. However, we have a terrible tendency to render service to other things—-service which, without careful regulation, easily becomes a sort of worship. For example, when we allow sports and hobbies, education, possessions, other people, our career, our health, or our reputation to distract us from our service to God, we are allowing those things to become idols in our lives.
We can make idols of other people through excessive admiration or hatred. If I hate someone, he dominates my thoughts, making it impossible for me to concentrate on God. When I render constant attention to someone, I make them a god in my life. If I take the idea of a role model to extremes, perhaps by asking myself what that person would do in a given situation, rather than what God would have me do, I have deified that role model.
Marian devotion in the Roman Catholic faith is an example of how a good concept — emulating the purity, faith, and love that Mary demonstrated — became a stumbling block for many believers, resulting in a virtual “cult of Mary” —- an idolatry of Christ’s mother. It isn’t that we are not to have role models or to emulate the faith of others, Saint Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:11 that we should follow him, even as he followed Christ, but we must always return to the Lord Jesus Christ as our supreme example. If I follow Mary, or Amy Carmichael, or Corrie ten Boom, or Saint Augustine, or Thomas a Kempis, rather than following the Lord who led them, I am committing idolatry because I am allowing them to distract me from God.
The most insidious idolatry of all is worship of man’s approval. If I begin to evaluate my actions based primarily on what others will think, I have abandoned my focus on God, and I have set myself up to commit idolatry by making man’s opinion of me more important than God’s opinion of me.
Thus, it becomes obvious that it is far easier to break this commandment than we might at first expect. Just because I don’t bow down and make offerings to a statue or image doesn’t mean I am keeping this commandment. The spirit of the commandment is that we must not let any influence into our lives that will distract us from serving continually in God’s presence.
3 Comments
Ummmm…
“Marian devotion in the Roman Catholic faith is an example of how a good concept — emulating the purity, faith, and love that Mary demonstrated — became a stumbling block for many believers, resulting in a virtual “cult of Mary” —- an idolatry of Christ’s mother. It isn’t that we are not to have role models or to emulate the faith of others, Saint Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:11 that we should follow him, even as he followed Christ, but we must always return to the Lord Jesus Christ as our supreme example. If I follow Mary, or Amy Carmichael, or Corrie ten Boom, or Saint Augustine, or Thomas a Kempis, rather than following the Lord who led them, I am committing idolatry because I am allowing them to distract me from God.”
But who is the Catholic who’d say he is following Mary or a Kempis or Augustine?
such a great post!!!
I was just having this discussion with my dad yesterday as a matter of fact. The Catholic church appears to “worship” Mary, Priests, Bishops, The Pope, anyone Sainted, etc…
I know my view here might rub some Catholics the wrong way, but I do believe the bible teaches the opposite of how the Catholic church practices its faith. If the people who belong to the Catholic church would do more reading for themselves, instead of allowing the priests and such to do the reading and interpreting for them; they might gain a completely different understanding of God’s expectations.
Friar Tuck, you raise a good point….
I don’t think that Catholic Church intentionally teaches people to worship Mary or anyone else, I think it’s just the nature of our fallen spirits to slip from devotion and love into idolatry too easily. And, as a Protestant, the idea of praying to anyone other than God seems to me to be awfully close to the line between devotion and idolatry. But I have met many Catholics (mostly women) who say that they find it far easier to pray to Mary than directly to God or Jesus. Perhaps this is something that the Catholic Church has tried to address?