| The Idolatry Issue
Posted: 5/6/2007 10:53:39 PM |
so why is it ok for a christian to have a statue of christ or the virgin...its called a symbol........but if other religions have statues.....it's called idolatry?
Both this question and the OP can be addressed with a single answer: it's called a double-standard. It's something humans do all the time for everything. Look at the double-standards revolving around gender and sex, they are not very different.
In this case, the double-standard is thus, and I'm nutshell-ing it here: "It's ok if we do it, but it's not ok if anyone else does."
Keep in mind, the Commandments are far older than Christianity, and in fact predate the written bible, as the Exodus story occurs long before the Babvylonian Captivity, which is the accepted historical point in which Jewish scriptures were first written down. Meaning, quite simply, that some of them may very well be outdated. | |
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| The Idolatry Issue
Posted: 5/6/2007 11:02:53 PM | My personal favorite comes from Kevin Smith's film "Dogma"
The Buddy Jesus!!!!! | |
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| The Idolatry Issue
Posted: 12/8/2007 1:38:52 PM | If Jesus was "God", then why does he differentiate himself from the divine creator by calling "him" father. The passage you refer to could just indicate the closeness of the relationship between Jesus and the divine. Jesus, (if he even existed at all...) was a JEW! He never renounced his Judaism, and followed all Jewish precepts. If he is who you Christians say he is, then why don't the Jews worship him as the Messiah as well?  | |
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| The Idolatry Issue
Posted: 12/8/2007 2:29:27 PM | Carpedium
Thank you...well said.
I always took the verse, "I and the father are one" to mean he was aligned with his spiritual father's will. That he was acting in accordance with god's will.
And we are all parts of god. How could it not be so? "god" created the universe...out of what? something that wasn't god? What could not be god if god is the alpha and omega? There is nothing else. If there was something separate from god then who created that? Another god?
I personally do not get the whole "idolatry" idea. A statue or symbol stands in for the deity it represents...it is not THE DEITY... and I don't believe anyone ever believed an idol was, it's stupid. They may have believed their deities inhabited certain statues or areas, maybe acting like a receiver/transmitter....Otherwise we are talking about fetishes.. (african concept) | |
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Ash_M
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Joined: 11/8/2007
Msg: 55 | |
| The Idolatry Issue
Posted: 12/8/2007 3:04:27 PM |
so why is it ok for a christian to have a statue of christ or the virgin...its called a symbol........but if other religions have statues.....it's called idolatry?
Both this question and the OP can be addressed with a single answer: it's called a double-standard. It's something humans do all the time for everything. I'm quite convinced that this is true. As I understand it, in most religions in which there was "idol worship", there was a clear understanding that the god was not actually in the idol, but just being represented. At least to the more thoughtful people in these religions. Naturally, as in all religions, I'm sure they had lots of unwashed naive masses who "truly believed!" 
But for myself, I much prefer no statues at all. That eliminates all of the questions. If you want a representation of something, why not make it something other than a living figure? | |
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| The Idolatry Issue
Posted: 12/8/2007 5:11:32 PM |
was a JEW! He never renounced his Judaism, and followed all Jewish precepts. If he is who you Christians say he is, then why don't the Jews worship him as the Messiah as well?
Some do. | |
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| The Idolatry Issue
Posted: 12/8/2007 5:17:02 PM | | Many who bow down and worship idols do so believing that the deity is or indwells the idol. Even the Israelites did this with the Golden Calf. They named the calf and worshipped it and bowed down to it and said, "This is our God who brought us out of captivity". It's even been suggested that they wrote the sacred name of G-d on the calf. | |
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| The Idolatry Issue
Posted: 12/8/2007 7:11:19 PM | | Was that before or after Moses made a brazen image of a snake on a pole? | |
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| The Idolatry Issue
Posted: 12/8/2007 7:13:00 PM |
was a JEW! He never renounced his Judaism, and followed all Jewish precepts. If he is who you Christians say he is, then why don't the Jews worship him as the Messiah as well?
Some do. Getting a bit off topic here, but this is addressed in the thread "Are Messianic Jewish people still Jewish ?" They believe they are Jewish. The vast majority of the rest of Judaism believes they are not. So long as they do not proselytize, I don't have a problem with them, just as I respect any group.
As to the more fundamental question of why Jews don't accept Jesus as the messiah, you should understand that in Judaism "messiah" does not mean the same thing as it later came to mean within Christianity. Messiah, means "anointed one", and has the connotation of governmental authority, rather than divinity. It would not be someone who was worshiped, but more like someone who was a ruler or King. Jesus, in making a claim to be the messiah, would have been acceptable to Jews of his day, since they were under Roman rule. But the claim would have been understood as a challenge to Roman authority, rather than as one of divinity. That's probably what got him in difficulty with the Romans.
When Roman rule continued, the conclusion of Jews was naturally that Jesus was not the messiah.
Later on Christianity started, and as in many religions, it incorporated the beliefs of other faiths around it. In particular the Hellenistic beliefs of a human who was raised from the dead and became divine. And so the definition of "Messiah" changed to suit, and came to mean the divine person familiar to Christians today. | |
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| The Idolatry Issue
Posted: 12/8/2007 7:30:11 PM |
Was that before or after Moses made a brazen image of a snake on a pole? That's a very interesting biblical passage. Numbers 21, so after the golden calf. But why were all the snakes biting the people, and why was this a good cure for snakebite?
So good you see it as the symbol of medicine to this day?
Apparently it was meant at the time only as a snakebite cure, but came to be worshiped as an idol later. So in 2 Kings 18:4, we see that King Hezekiah has it taken down for that reason. | |
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