"You will not make for yourself an eidolon..." (Exodus, 20:4, LXX)
The word "eidolon" in Greek is an interesting choice for the translators of the Septuagint to render the Hebrew word "pesel" in the commandment. The word "pesel" means "something which is hewn or cut," and thus a "statue" (which is its Modern Hebrew meaning), or as it is more commonly translated, an "idol." But the word used to translate it in Greek, while being the linguistic ancestor of the word "idol," originally meant something like "phantom of the mind" in older, Classical Greek, or "an image in one's mind." It might have described the "phantoms" a person with schizophrenia might see, such as the hallucinations the main character of "A Beautiful Mind" continued to see throughout his life. There is a sense of self-delusion to the word, as well as seeing things that aren't there.
Frequently, we create such images in our minds about celebrities. We compile all sorts of information from media, news articles and television programs, about them. For example, I know that Keanu Reeves, one actor I highly respect as a person, professes to be a Buddhist. I know that he has suffered many personal tragedies in his life, and that he gives generously, lives fairly simply, and is well liked by just about everyone who has ever interacted with him. I know he's been in several movies, is currently in a serious relationship with his girlfriend, and that Winona Rider once wasn't certain if she was actually married to him by accident. I know all of this and a little more about him.
Does this mean I know him? Does the image I've built in my mind about Keanu Reeves mean that I have a relationship with him? No. Of course not. I've never met him in my life. Were we to walk past each other on the street, while I would recognize him, he would have no idea who I was, and have no reason to interact with me other than to be friendly and polite. I have built an "eidolon," an image in my mind about Keanu Reeves, but I do not know Keanu Reeves as a person.
God was very clear in His commandment to Israel that they not create these eidolons about Him, or anything else they might think of as deity. He was very clear that He could not be represented by any kind of statue or description. This is reminiscent of the first line of the Tao Te Ching which says, "The Tao which can be named is not the Eternal Tao." He was not a figment of the imagination, or a phantom of the mind. He was real, living, and spoke to them directly on many occasions as well as through His prophets. He wanted them to know Him as a person, to interact with Him, and to get to know Him as He is rather than create these imagined versions of Him.
Many Christians do this very thing which He commanded against. They fill their minds with images of what God is supposed to be according to the doctrine of the church they attend, and then are told that if they believe in these images, they know Him. If they accept these particular phantoms of the mind as true, then they have a personal relationship with Him.
Rubbish. It's just as much rubbish as if I believed I had a personal relationship with Keanu Reeves based on what little I know about his life and personality. It's a phantom of the mind, an eidolon, an idol which they are taught to serve and worship.
The only way to get to know someone is to talk to them, spend time with them, interact with them, shut up and listen to them when they talk, and to pay attention to the person themselves, not the poster on the wall bearing what is supposed to be their image. When Jesus says "I never knew you," it is to those people who sincerely believed they knew Him, but in fact only knew the phantom of the mind which they had created about Him. They had supposedly done all these great works in His name, but in reality had only done it in the service of the idol they had been taught to construct.
Why is actually knowing God personally, and interacting with Him considered such a rare thing? Why is it that we consider the person who claims it to be either a super Saint or delusional? Why is it that we are so afraid of it that we substitute doctrines and theologies about God, instead of just getting to know Him through interaction, something which He is all for, by the way.
In order to really get to know someone, you have to strip away all of your preconceptions and eidolons about that person. You have to let them all go and just let that person be as real and as human (or divine in God's case) as they actually are without judgment or condemnation for them being who they are. You have to unlearn everything you had previously learned in order to get to the reality.
I find that it is these eidolons about the Father and about Jesus Himself which is the biggest obstacle for Christians in particular to overcome in order to know Him. And the irony is that they are always erected with the best and most reverent of intentions.
Ask yourself, do I actually know Him, or do I only know about the image of Him I've constructed in my own mind? And then be prepared for some deconstruction and tearing down of idols.
No comments:
Post a Comment