No Other Gods
A reflection on the first two Commandments of Exodus
“You shall have no other gods before me.” Exodus 20:3
The very first commandment. It strikes some as a biblical admittance of the existence of other gods. I would say it most certainly is, but I believe it should be taken in a broader context than is usually intended when we use the word “gods”. Most people think of supernatural entities when they hear the word “gods”, but I think of money, fame, power, greed, social status… the list goes on and on. These are “gods” to us. We seek after and reach for each of them at some point in our lives. They are in our thoughts when we go to sleep, wake us up each morning, and haunt our dreams in between. Is that not what God asks us to do with Him in mind?
Before we move on, let’s just read ahead to the second commandment…
“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.” Exodus 20:4–6
So we’re going to explore the “sin of the parents” bomb-drop in the middle of that verse, but first we’ve got to address some of the oddly specific details packed into this commandment. It is usually paraphrased down to “You shall not have false idols”, which is useful to get the point across, but the actual commandment is specifying way more here. No images “in the form of anything” above, grounded, or below. We are a world that operates on images. There’s branding on everything. The almighty dollar is signified and used on all money and transactions. If we’re not bowing down or worshiping that sign, then I have to ask what your idea of worship is? What other images do we worship: a particular brand, a drink, a substance, a number of likes, a person, a book, a cross?
We’ve all heard this before, in some form or another, so I don’t need to beat this horse. I do believe we need to seriously question “What is worship?”, what does it mean, and when are we “worshiping” the false idols? That will go great lengths towards avoiding the latter half of the commandment, where God literally threatens your children for breaking this commandment.
One last tangent before we get into that though. In Taoism, a central tenet is being in harmony with the ever-changing cycles of nature and the heavens. However vague it describes how to be in said “harmony”, it does elaborate on how the consequences of disharmony get doled out. You may not feel the effects that your disharmony causes. It may be a delayed effect that others around you, after you, feel. Those who get the brunt of the consequences are not the cause, how is that just? There’s also the problem of generational behaviors where you may pass on your disharmonious behaviors to your children, who will repeat them and cause further disruption. That’s how we create cycles of disruption, and the effects are felt further and further into the future.
By focusing on God, worshiping God, you fill your mind with thoughts of God. They are the thoughts that carry you to sleep, wake you up, and comfort you in your dreams. When we create these idolatrous images and worship them, our attention is scattered onto something that is not “real”. These idols are social constructs, created by humanity. According to the Bible, these idols are not worthy of worship and praise. They are not worthy of filling up so much of our minds that we cannot see or focus on God. I’d argue that when we do, we throw off the balance.
Nature, the universe, God, it is all going to do what it is going to do. They are forces beyond us, they will continue spinning and moving and generating long after we are gone. When we are not focused on God, we are not focusing on harmonious existence. We are swayed so by the socially constructed idols, that we disregard natural cycles, where we place other values over what needs to happen to heal the world. We can’t let money or greed be the only values that act as our guiding stars. We have to pump the brakes on unchecked growth due to being solely focused on “return on investment”. A perfect example is the phosphorus cycle. Here’s a great article that explains this disharmony that we’ve created which will eventually lead to millions, if not billions, of people starving:
God is worthy of our worship and praise. By focusing on your place, on your present moment, feel yourself moving along with the flow of events around you. It can be the feel of the wind, the sound of traffic or birds, the feel of rain drops, a great song, the presence of a loved one. Be there and present, and you will stare into the face of God. I’m not saying you have to go around singing hymns and quoting verses in order to worship God. Those things were made by humans. Even if those people had God in mind while they were creating them, they’re still no substitute for experiencing God directly, right where we are.
Are these things “images”, the song or the wind? In one sense, yes. They are experiences imprinting upon your perceptions and consciousness. However, I would argue that they are not “images” in the sense of a false idol. They are discrete and fleeting, not static magical fetishes. They come and go. They are part of the ever-changing flow of Creation. The conscious experience is God-in-the-moment, not God-in-the-thing. God made us to be conscious and experience all of Creation and what it has to offer. And yes, He made us to take part in that Creation, to be creators ourselves. There is a spark of divinity in everything we do and make, whether we realize it or not.
The key point is that we are focusing on the experience of God, not the thing that leads us to that experience. The experience, in itself, is worship. The joy we feel is praise. Literally anything can lead us to that experience, because God is everywhere and everything, right here and right now.
When you maintain focus on God, you start to see that there are other values, other things to strive for, other motivations to reach ever greater heights. These values come from God, not a social construct. These values will guide you towards loving God, and when you see God wherever you go, then you love wherever you go. Then God will show love to a thousand generations for doing this. That is what is promised in the commandment. I believe it’s less of a promise than it is a prediction, because the world is the way it is due to what I call “generational sin” and “societal sin”, and also mistaking the thing for God. The thing is only a tiny particle of the His infinite being. We are too caught up in the things that have been created to try and find meaning in our lives, when we’re always surrounded by God’s infinite meaning.
When we give meaning to these idols, by our worship, our focus, our attention, that meaning gets reflected back to us. We think we are getting our meaning, our purpose, in life from the pursuit of money and power and fame, even if we tell ourselves that they are merely means to what we intend to be a better end. Yet we are forgetting that we are the ones that gave these constructs their meaning to begin with. What gets reflected back is only a smaller fraction of the original. Like the image of a mirror in a mirror, it just gets smaller and smaller. We get less and less meaning, purpose, and value to our lives. We forget that the only reason we can impart meaning like that is because we are connected to the source of all meaning. When we focus on God, what we get back is not just a smaller fraction of what we gave, but an infinite amount of energy and meaning. God stares back and gives us strength and purpose. Turn the mirror around and see the real thing reflected back.
I think these are some of the true lessons to be learned from the first two commandments. I believe it’s not so much that God is jealous and wants us to worship only Him, I think it’s more saying these are just the natural consequences of creating a social construct and following it around like Pokemon Go. (Yep, totally what Moses intended on saying. Nailed it!) When we shift our values to something man-made, we just set up a repeating, decaying loop, that is not sustainable over generations. So the “sins of the father” is just a natural consequence of actions that take time to reveal the cycles that they’re interfering with or destroying. When we focus on God, we see God everywhere. We act with loving care towards all and that gets reflected back to us. We see the dis-harmonies in our world and we seek to correct them, heal them. But we can’t do so with our own wisdom. We can’t erect a new idol of our own self-righteousness, crusading to save the world, no matter what “enemy” we are trying to save it from.
We have to maintain focus on God. Then whatever we put our mind to will have the wisdom of God reflected in it. God is the one who created the heavens and the earth, and all of the seasons and cycles within it. He is both the composer and the orchestra, He created the harmonies and He is the harmony. If we worship and remain attentive to God, then all of our actions in our present moment will be part of the harmony too.
