A meditation on idolatry may seem rather odd, but I hope if you read on you will understand better why it is here.

Idolatry can be seen as the absolute form of a tendency which is easy to define, but hard to avoid. If there is an absolute Source of All, a God of Creation, as many religions assert, the most natural tendency is anthropomorphism. By this we mean the assigning of human attributes and attitudes to God. If God be God, then we have to be very careful how we attempt to understand him. What does God's anger mean, for instance? Anger is a very human emotion. Are we saying that God gets cross, as we might, when events do not fall out as we expected, or people do things which hurt us?

But the problem goes deeper. For in a sense anthropomorphism is the only option we have. We can only really understand anything from the starting point of what we have already experienced. We begin with a God like us, because what else can we begin with. In fact there is some authority for believing that the human condition is a partial insight into the nature of the divine. If the Genesis account of creation has any truth in it, we humans are made as an image, a likeness, of the very Creator God.

But every time we reflect on the best we see in the human condition, any concept we have of human love, we must remind ourselves that this can only be but a pale shadow of what the love of the True God is like. In the Christian tradition, the saying 'God is Love' is both hugely important, yet still an impossible challenge to mere intellect. We need to be reminded that 'now' we understand only in part, but 'then' there will be direct experience, and we will understand fully. We will know, even as we are known.

Plato had a similar view of the extent to which the 'real' can be experienced by mere mortals, a shadow projected from behind on to the wall of a cave, when even the things making the shapes that are seen are only things within the cave. Meanwhile, outside the cave is the more complete reality, at two stages of remove.

We are wary therefore of trusting our own understanding of the Almighty, and, if we are wise, of forcing that understanding on others. But we must also remain true to what we have already experienced, and count it as 'real', in the sense that it is the best reality we can digest at this stage of our development. This is what faith is, counting as real what we know is not yet perfect, while waiting for the better understanding to be ours when we are ready for it.

When Moses asked for God to reveal Himself properly, he was told that that was not to be, for it would be the unmaking of him if it happened. He has allowed to be close to the presence of God, but protected by 'a cleft in a rock' while God passed by, but not allowed a direct view of God. And even this partial encounter cause his face to shine, we are told (Genesis 33 and 34), to the discomfort of every one else.

And this is where we meet idolatry in its most obvious form. For while Moses was receiving the Covenant (a relationship defining contract between the Almighty and the descendants of Jacob/Israel, the chosen nation of twelve tribes), the people demanded that Aaron, Moses' deputy, fashion them a likeness of the god who had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. So Aaron got them to pool their gold jewelry, and made them an image, a golden calf. The calf was always a potent fertility symbol.

We call them the Ten Commandments, and there indeed ten main themes, but a carefull reading shows them to be more than a list of ten forbidden things. And the main emphasis of the first four is a revelation of the nature of the Almighty who had rescued them. They should always be read in their entirety:

The command to worship only the Almighty who had rescued them from Egypt was stated in henotheistic rather than monotheistic terms. Perhaps the people were not yet ready for the assertion that there is only one God, and so were required only to worship this one, and no others. Not making any images was easy enough to understand, but a massive challenge to those brought up in the Egypt of that day. Hence the golden calf. The third requirement was not to misuse, or take in vain, the name of God. This is rather hard to understand correctly. Taken literally it seems to forbid using swearwords. But it means much more, as we shall see. And the seventh day as a day of rest is stated as a memorial, a permanent reminder, of God's creative acts.

Suppose we take these as a progressive revelation. God is the God who acts in history (rescues nations), who cannot be represented by any image, who cannot be controlled (our oaths cannot bind him), and who is the creator of all things.

The remaining commandments also place values: on the family as the stabilising unit for society (loose this and you loose your security as a nation), on human life, on marriage, on property, on truth, and on right desires. So much could be said about all these, for we live in a time when they are all being ignored and flouted.

But I want to focus on the common ideas behind the second and the third commandments. To make an image of god, or to bind him with any special form of words, are together the essence of idolatry. Idolatry is the belief that one can control God. If you make a statue, you can put it in a prominent place, or in a cupboard out of sight. Oaths and curses have at their heart a belief that some special form of words can bind, hence control, God in some way so that the desired result is forced from him. But the God of all Creation cannot and will not be controlled.

This is the mistake that seems so prevalent among the religious. We must be careful, we who believe in God, not to suppose that He is to be bribed by our devotions, or forced by our incantations. When king Solomon dedicated the Temple, he knew that God could not be contained in any building. Bowing towards any symbol, such as a cross, or believing that special words uttered by particular people can effect any actual desired modification through some automatic miracle, is to be close to precisely the same mistaken view of God as those who made a golden calf to help them focus on their rescuer from Egypt.

It is so easy for religion to become for us the means by which we hope to control God, or to manipulate Him, and even, I fear it may be true for some, including me, to keep Him at a distance. If God be God, there is no part of my life He does not want to visit. I cannot confine Him to Sundays (if I am Christian), or to Saturdays (if I am a Jew), or to Fridays (if I am a Muslim). But how tempting sometimes to try to.