You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything…you shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God.
How are we to relate to God? A God who, at one point in history, made everything in the whole of existence. A God who, at another point in history, promised to redeem His people after they rebelled against Him in paradise. A God who, later still, freed His people from slavery. Rescued them from foreign oppressors and gave them success in battle. Redeemed them through righteousness, sacrifice, and victory of His own Son. How are we supposed to relate to Him?
Worship and the Second Commandment
If you haven’t noticed before, the Christian God is an invisible God. He has no form or breath or hand that we should look at or touch Him. How are we supposed to be reminded of this God if we can’t physically interact with Him?
Having moved across the United States several times, I have come to appreciate the use of technology to allow me to keep in contact with family and close friends. Though I cannot interact with them on a regular basis physically, I can still interact with them through a medium of screens or physical paper. If you haven’t looked into the technology of screens, you’d be surprised to hear that a phone call or video call does not give you access to your loved one; it is always a reproduction of the sensory input from either end. Their voice is caught by one microphone, approximated into digital signals, transmitted across various frequencies, and reconstructed on your phone’s speakers. Their face is similarly broken down and transmitted into picture formats.
This illustration of means of relationship helps me to appreciate this second commandment. God has every right to dictate how we relate to Him, and He knows how different mediums affect us. In His wisdom, He does not allow us to reproduce what we think He looks like in order to worship Him (or others). Instead, He has given us plenty of means through which to worship Him: Word, sacrament, and prayer. His Word (read in the Scriptures and preached in gathered worship) instructs us according to His will. The sacraments of baptism and communion are visible signs to help us ascertain the graces they signify. Prayer is our phone line right to His ear, with His own Son, Jesus, operating as the medium through which our prayers are transmitted.
Idols have no place in our lives to bring God down to our senses. God has decreed that they would not, and He has given us plenty of effective means to bring Himself into our world that we might understand Him and relate to Him.
How are you making use of the Bible, both read and preached, in your relationship with God? How about the regular observance of baptism or communion? What about prayer?