The worship of idols and personalities

Religion Zone
Worship should be directed towards one entity only, and that is to the Lord our God, the Almighty. We commonly find people worshipping other things or beings for a variety of reasons. There should be a clear distinction between respect for something or someone and the worship of the thing or person.

Worship should be directed towards one entity only, and that is to the Lord our God, the Almighty. We commonly find people worshipping other things or beings for a variety of reasons. There should be a clear distinction between respect for something or someone and the worship of the thing or person.

sundayword BY PROSPER TINGINI

Respect is an admiration, recognition and honour of someone for a particular cause. To worship is to show religious devotion to someone or something. Worship is an extension of respect in a religious sense. It is quite common to find people transferring their worship to religious leaders in the place of God. By proclaiming God to be the god of a particular prophet, or someone else, you are thus removing God from your presence and substituting Him with another person. We also find such things in the political arena where there are cultures of hero-worshipping of all sorts.

While the first commandment clearly tells us that there is only one God, the second commandment goes on to specify some activities that may be construed as a worship of other things. Exodus 20:4-6 reads, “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow to them or serve them. For I, the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

We Christians have very often come under attack for the way we project Jesus Christ and the cross. Rightly so, some of us have totally replaced God the Almighty and in His place we have put Jesus Christ. The name of the Lord our God, the Jehovah, has now almost been obliterated and forgotten. Christ is now the God of worship. Instead of praying through Jesus to the Lord our God, we are now praying to Jesus as the God. So entrenched is this belief in some of our Christian minds that some of us now even strongly believe that it was Jesus Christ who created the heavens and the earth. In such a scenario, Jesus Christ has thus overtaken his own father, the Almighty. Another area of concern is the significance of the cross as a sign of Christ’s suffering. While it is proper to keep replicas of the cross in memory of Jesus’ death, to then kneel down in prayer to the cross then flies in the face of the second commandment which prohibits any such practices. There is absolutely nothing wrong in keeping the cross as a souvenir or even wearing it for that matter. What is wrong is to make the cross the symbol of worship.

As an extension to that, we often hear some religious worship and murmurings on Mother Mary’s molten or graven images. It is a fact that we love Mother Mary for being the mother to our Lord Jesus Christ. It is also common to find erected shrines with images of Mother Mary within such shrines, where people then often gather to bow down to give prayers in honour of such images. In the third book of Moses, Leviticus 26:1, the Lord our God reiterated on the same commandment, saying; “You shall make for yourself no idols and erect no graven image or pillar, and you shall not set up a figured stone in your land, to bow down to them; for I am the Lord your God”.

If we depend too much on an individual, or place our total faith in him, it is not surprising that we often end up bowing down and even worshipping that individual. It is in our nature as human beings. Even our own scriptures of the Holy Bible have such examples. In the second book of Moses, Exodus:32 has a classic example of blinded and harnessed following. Aaron was Moses’ assistant and right-hand man. He knew God but he was too dependent on Moses for everything. When Moses left him with the Israeli people to go and speak with God up on the mountain, Aaron was clueless on how to lead the people or on what to do. He couldn’t communicate directly with God, neither could he entrust people’s lives with his own faith. In collaboration with the people, he ended up erecting a lifeless golden statue of a calf as if it would take the place of Moses. This angered God to the core. Let’s not erect lifeless statues or idolise things or people and bow down to worship them. Sometimes God will test our faith by removing the things or people we depend on. If these things stand in the way of your relationship with God, He will take those things away to test our strength and faith.

Prayer should always be directed towards God, whether through Jesus Christ or through any other prophetic figure we might cherish. Let us not worship the prophets themselves, but rather seek to strengthen our own faith through them. We should also pray to God both in good times and in bad times. Do not pray only in times of need. If you are in that habit, then God will surely keep you in problems so that you can keep in touch with Him all the time.

The political scene in Zimbabwe appropriately mirrors idol and personality worship. How many times have we heard some overzealous ministers or party members equating the president [Robert Mugabe] with Jesus Christ or even likening him to God? Have we not heard some people claim that he will even rule from the grave? Is a person with flesh and blood irreplaceable when it comes to leadership positions or the like, even after death? Yes, we love the president very much but let us not idolise him into immortality. History will always record the many good deeds of the president without subjecting him to religious abominations. May the Lord bless him.

Humanity has always had the propensity to make gods out of cherished things. The Romans, Egyptians and others converted such things as the sun, the moon, the planets, the oceans and many other things into gods. As such, many societies ended up with many gods. It is a weakness among mankind. Luckily, our black African ancestry has no record of any known idol worship or of any known graven or molten images. They subscribed to the notion of a one God who was somewhere in the heavens, the Mumweariko (Mwari) or Musikavanhu. Peace be upon them too. The Lord our God promulgated His laws and commandments and made the worship of one God the most important and at the top of all others. The second commandment told people what not to worship. Let us follow that line of order. Even our cherished Jesus Christ spoke of the same language with God (Mark 21:28-31 and Matthew 22:35-40).

Unfortunately, even Christians are no longer exclusively following the teachings of Jesus Christ but choose instead those of his predecessor, Pauline Kerygma, known as Paul in the New Testament. The teachings of Paul, through his letters to various church entities of that time, now overshadow the teachings of Christ. Although Paul speaks in honour of Christ, some of his teachings at times differ from those of Christ. Christianity has embraced the teachings of Paul to an extent where they are now ahead of those of the patriarch, Jesus Christ. It is as if Paul has become the new Christ. The religious gurus and others should place things in their proper perspectives.

Prosper Tingini compiled a book titled God’s Constitution for Mankind – The Laws and Commandments. His contact details are 0771 260 195 or email: [email protected]