Idols and Dangers
As a rule, idols are created from fragile materials: our expectations and dreams, imaginings and fantasies, ideas and illusions. And this is a very dangerous thing!
At any moment (and it will definitely come) the pedestal will collapse together with our ephemeral idol and dreams shattered into smithereens.
This applies both to people and to different places which we defined as special and best.
Everything that overshadows God is false. If something in our life prevails over God’s grace, it is certainly not useful and we should rather escape from it.
The Lord warned us about this in His commandments: “Do not make an idol for yourself… Do not worship them and do not serve them; for I am the Lord, thy God.”
Our idols are our manifested passions: lack of faith, vanity, voluptuousness, covetousness. If we remove passions, all idols will disappear, too. They hinge only on them.
And the existence of idols speaks of our personal corruption and soreness, of our problems.
Any person is imperfect, and all the images attributed to another man live exclusively in our imagination. Only the Lord knows the true face of each of us.
Creating an idol, we not only damage our soul, but also increase the evil in the world. Our inevitable disappointments in idols will turn into anger and “righteous anger”, which kill everything good and beautiful with destructive force.
First Idol
Where did this passion for idolatry come from? It came from the first people.
The commandment given by God to people saying not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil protected man from falling apart from God and from the numerous violations and distortions that followed.
Obeying God in everything, man would have gradually grown in his love for Him. And in time he would have come so close that he would have been able to see Divine greatness in all His beauty and fullness. And after that he would have moved to a higher level: absolute faithfulness to the Creator, full merging with the Source of Life.
But we know from the Holy Scriptures how God’s purpose was accepted by people.
Man didn’t have enough humility, spirit, and love to choose the developmental path proposed by the Lord. So he voluntarily refused it, choosing the “easy path” offered by the serpent – “taste… and you shall be as gods” (Genesis 3: 5).
The desire to be a god without God is prompted by pride, which is the main cause of all evils and all deviations from the Lord.
And it was thanks to pride that the man himself became the first idol, boasting before the Lord of his merits, forgetting that he had received everything from Him.
The arrogant man is sure that he can achieve everything himself, and not by the grace of God, thanks to His gracious help. He considers himself chosen by God, and this is a sure sign of egocentrism and, as a rule, has no bottom.
Creating an idol (or becoming an idol ourselves), we automatically stop serving God, we lose Him, opening ourselves up to evil.
Evil is always a rebellion against God. It is the revolt of the damaged nature of the person who turned away from Him. Evil does not exist outside of a person; it exists only at the time of its commission. Therefore, the personal choice of each of us, our obedience to God, good will and absolute faith in Him are so important. Without any idols and heroes.
Translated by Alyona Malafeeva
