Well Humm,
When I was a boy, I read the Bible stories about people making idols out of wood, stone, or gold and worshiping them. I thought to myself, “That is patently silly on it’s face. How could any reasonably intelligent person worship a thing they themselves carved? They know it’s not a God; They MADE IT! Where people just way more stupid back then?”
It wasn’t until I was grown up that I finally unraveled the idol worship mystery. It’s actually not stupid at all. It’s a politically useful move to make idols. What a stone idol is is a god who is a puppet YOU control. It serves a very real purpose. To wit: It takes the heat off of you, while leaving you in control. Rather than telling people that YOU command them to do something, you tell them that the stone god commanded them to do something, and you are just here to enforce the order. This arrangement allows the political craftsman to short circuit people’s logical, natural, and reasonable objections to their edicts. A good idol is the foundation upon which the “I’m just doing my job” excuse always rests. It also allows the one who made the idol to disassociate themselves from their own actions. Which makes it much easier for them to do horrible things to people.
Idol worship is still in wide spread political use today. Think about it: What’s this difference in a statue made of wood, and a statute made of paper? They are both just a puppet made by the power crowd, that they control and can push the blame off onto. Members of the political class love to say “It’s not in my hands. This is what the policy says I must do to you. I’m sorry. My hands are tied.” Never mind the fact that the very real hands they claim are tied are the same hands that made up that policy from scratch in the first place.
This is all a form of rudimentary witchcraft, whereby a spell is cast that invites people to internalize a cognitive split between what they do, and their responsibility for doing it. Bureaucracy is part and parcel to the Dark Arts. It magically gets droves of otherwise good people to do unthinkably evil and destructive things to millions of their neighbors. And yet you can go from the top to the bottom of the bureaucracy and never be able to find even one damn person who is responsible for the damage they are doing. They may even be fully aware of the damage that is being done. But that’s the power of the spell they are under: They think they are bound to serve the deity that is those papers. Their eyes are glazed over and they can’t shake themselves out of the bureau- stupor and simply say “What on earth am I doing to my fellow man? I gotta quit this! It’s wrong!” They are under “a powerful delusion” that has been around from the beginning of time, and that we know will grow stronger towards the end.
It’s sad and scary. But we were made for times such as these. Look at the heroes of the faith: Moses, Daniel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Jesus, John The Baptist, David, Samuel, Enoch, Elijah, Ester, Noah, and all the rest of them spoke truth to those under the spell. They saw past the idols, and debunked the hoax. They refused to bow down. They refused to go under the spell. From Genesis all the way to Revelation the story of not bowing down is a consistent theme. This is because God delights in the voice of one of His children when it speaks truth without any quivering fear. It’s a voice that rings like a clear and strong bell, which deaf ears may not hear, but every heart can feel.
All’s Well,
–Schaeffer Cox (2-19-19)
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