Gods
and Idols
Delivered by
Ilona Forgeng, October 16, 2005
At the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, New Bern, NC
READING
This story from Joseph Campbell is one of my favorites. It is about a tribe in Australia whose gods maintained social order with the aid of “bullroarers.” Bullroarers are long flat boards with a couple of slits cut in them. They have a rope tied to one end, and are swung around over one’s head, producing an eerie low kind of humming sound quite like an angry god might make. When the gods were angry with the tribe, the voice of the bullroarer echoed in the woods at night. No one, of course, ever saw the gods do this. The next day, the males of the tribe would explain what the gods were angry about, and what behaviors had to change.
This was the great secret kept by the men of the tribe. Young boys were introduced to the secret during their initiation into manhood by the tribal elders.
The initiation rite was all very dramatic, very ritualized, and very bloody. In the evening, some of the tribal elders, wearing fierce and frightening masks, came to kidnap the young boy. The women pretended to defend him, but they knew the routine, and eventually the men overpowered the women and dragged the boy into the woods.
Once there, the boy was tied to a table, and the frightening initiation rite took place, with the noise of the bullroarer constantly in the background.
Finally, when the boy was completely exhausted emotionally, one of the men dipped the end of the bullroarer in the boy’s blood, brought it up near his face. The boy surely knew he was in the presence of the gods. And then the god removed his mask — so the boy would recognize him as a man he’d known all his life — and the man said: “We make the noises!”
We make the noises. Always and everywhere. We make the noises we attribute to the gods.
And from Bertrand Russell’s Autobiography:
Three passions, simple, but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering.
Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
the vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of others.
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living.
Sermon
First, let’s get it straight. God is not a critter, not a being of any kind, no weight, takes up no space. No long white beard, no kneecaps, no toenails. We are not talking about a God invented for men afraid of lightening or of dying in battle. We know there isn’t anything living up there above the clouds.
The god I am talking about is an ideal, an idea, a concept, a value; the God I am talking about is a center and an orientation, that if we live successfully with it, around it and through it, we will be blessed with a better or at least a more fulfilling life. We will be able to look back at the end of that life and be pleased with the ideals we have tried to live by; we will feel we have been a blessing to ourselves and others.
God is an idea, a concept. Today I would like to ask some questions about the content and style of that concept for each of us, and the relevance and value of that concept for our lives.
We all serve our own gods, often we serve many gods, and we serve different gods at different times of our lives, sometimes we serve one god in the morning and a different god in the evening. Indeed, at times we are distracted and serve minor gods like the god of sailing or computer solitaire, while other times we have ourselves together and serve the true gods of love and compassion, justice, and wisdom.
But God remains a concept. Whether we are serving true gods or false idols depends on whether these concepts and ideas, these gods and idols can deliver on their promise of a better life.
In Death of a Salesman, Willie Loman’s suicide was about someone abandoned by the god he had served. He had put his faith in the god called The American Dream to lead him to salvation, but in the end he was left with nothing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said,
A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.
If we are to have a life worth living, it is incumbent upon us to examine the gods we serve and to ask honestly, are they leading to the life we want, to a fuller, more meaningful life, or are they taking more from us than they are giving. Are our ideals and goals true gods giving us a richness of spirit, or are they false idols stealing our spirit, stealing our lives.
Since the beginning of humanity and across the earth, Gods have been invented as vehicles to carry our very highest ideals and values for us.
The most important value of the earliest societies would have been fertility. From whence comes the charming Venus of Wittenberg on the cover of this morning’s order of service. Later Micah’s god was a god who valued justice, mercy and humility. And Jesus concept of a god was of a father who loves and accepts us all. But they weren’t really talking about God, capital G; they were talking about the ideals that they saw as important, of value, even of necessity for their times and their cultures.
We give our ideals and values to the gods, and the gods give our values back to us with an importance that we could never give them ourselves. We create our gods to carry the ideals we serve and to assure us they are ideals worthy of God. Gods are real only in as much as the values they carry for us are real and are worthy of the very best that is in us. WE make the noises.
As early as 1840, Ludwig Feuerbach argued that we assign to God those attributes that we consider divine. God is love, mercy and justice because these are attributes that we prize. Feuerbach shows that in every aspect God corresponds to some feature or need of human nature. Feuerbach says, "If we are to find contentment in God, we must find ourselves in God."
Or, as Voltaire said, If god created us in his own image, we have more than returned the compliment.
I am saying that we need to know what those attributes are for us that make our gods, and we need to be sure we serve those gods wisely and well.
So, how can we tell if an idea is a God or an idol?
Gods deliver on the promise of a more authentic life.
An Idol promises a lot, but can’t deliver.
Gods give our lives meaning.
Idols suck us dry.
Gods are life sustaining.
Idols give no life beyond ourselves
Gods build people of good character.
Gods make us a blessing to ourselves and others.
Gods represent the very highest ideals we are capable of and present us with worthwhile and abiding truths.
If you need help in distinguishing between Gods and Idols, go to a memorial service. Listen. At a memorial service we celebrate our finest gods as we celebrate the way people live their lives, how they share, how they love, how they help. How HUMAN they are. In the end it is about having been a blessing to ourselves and others.
John’s father-in-law rose through the ranks of American Can to become vice-president. He was wealthy, respected, lived in the right neighborhood, and he knew he had good friends at American Can; after all, he played golf with them all the time. But he had to retire, and after that, no one called, no one came to see him—he had devoted his life to serving his god, and at the end he was left with nothing. What did Cardinal Woolsey say? Had I but served my god half so well as I served my king, he would not have left me here to die like this.
xxxx’s case started out much the same—when he left Alcoa in Jamaica he discovered that all the status he had with Jamaicans went with the job, not the person, so Gerry went off and served far different gods, working with Mother Theresa, studying with the Sioux and the Hindus, serving an interesting and, I think, worthwhile god.
If you want to know what God someone follows, what their true religion is, don’t ask them – just watch them. You’ll know if they are following Gods or Idols.
One of the ideas that Joseph Campbell stressed was the importance of “following your bliss.” He said that if you follow your bliss, doors will open for you. If you are on the right path, if you serve the right gods, they will provide you with a worthwhile life—the life you should be leading all along.
We all find our own gods to serve, let them be the best gods we can aspire to.
Even true gods can suck life out of us if we serve them too well.
Too many women return to an abusive husband because they are convinced that god wants them to forgive. Women’s shelters are full of women who keep forgiving, giving one more chance, going back into an abusive relationship.
We know people who serve the god of compassion, but serve too well. People who are always on call when someone needs them. Wearing themselves down to help others, others often will not help themselves, who take advantage of them.
We learn early in our lives that honesty should have a good smattering of tact mixed in.
If we serve our gods blindly, single-mindedly, we can end up with Love without tolerance, knowledge without wisdom, justice without mercy.
Love, compassion, justice, trust, wisdom, these are indeed gods worthy of our service. But no gods are worthy of our worship. We make our gods into idols by worshiping them. Serve them we must, but in worshiping even the true gods, we can turn them into an obsession. Duty becomes obligation, courage becomes foolhardiness, patriotism becomes fanaticism. We shall serve our gods, but we must serve them well and properly.
Just as Gods served too well become idols, idols, when used properly, can aid us in our service of worthy gods. We can serve the god of justice better if we have some power and money. Power and money in the service of justice and compassion become handmaidens to the gods. It is when the power and the money become ends in themselves that they are idols.
The gods we serve can be a kind of Myers-Briggs personality test, and just like the Myers Briggs, by knowing what gods the people around us serve, we can better understand each other.
Some months ago a visiting minister spoke on trust as the most important value in human relationships. Blaine serves the god of trust. Sydney, who, in case you hadn’t noticed, serves the god of love and compassion, was in the congregation that day. For Sydney the most important value in human relationships is love, not trust. The god of love and the god of trust. We didn’t quite start a religious war, there was no inquisition, but didn’t you hear an echo of “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
The Greeks probably did their gods better than anyone else. They saw their gods, not so much as vehicles for their ideas as personifications of human nature, personifications of all of those forces in and around us we need to understand and find a way to deal with. They took the powers, the passions, the obsessions, the psychological forces around them and made them all into gods. They wrapped gods and idols into one very neat package.
A God is a center of value, orientation and allegiance. And an idol is something that pretends to be like that, but we find, usually too late, that it got its power by sucking the life out of us rather than helping put more worthy life into us.
Unfortunately, it is often pretty late in the game that we figure out the difference between gods and idols. But it is never too late if you are honest and know the symptoms.
One of the most impressive stories of recognizing we are following false idols and turning instead to healthy gods is the story of Millard Fuller. Fuller had become a self-made millionaire by the age of 20. As the business prospered, his health suffered and his marriage was collapsing. Fuller took a look his values and priorities. He and his wife sold their possessions, gave the money to the poor and finally started several enterprises, including a ministry in housing. This ministry, serving the poor and providing low-cost housing, grew into Habitat for Humanity, which has built over 200,000 low-cost homes in 100 countries around the world. That is some god to serve.
Serving gods is not a guarantee of a good, satisfying life. Gods make no promises. But serving true gods will put us in touch with the higher values that lead toward a meaningful life. True gods will help us find pathways to authenticity and will attract those friends with whom we can travel our pathways in fellowship.
Let us ask, Does this god
give life, or does it suck it out? Do I feel the warmth of being human, or am I developing a bad case of frostbite? Does this god offer a worthwhile and fulfilling life or does it leave me without a vision.
Is this god useful to me, worthy of the very highest ideals I am capable of and does it make me a blessing to myself and others.
Let us find gods worth serving. There are so many powerful voices
and so few are worthy. Let us find gods worth serving. Let us become the answers to our own prayers.
Shalom, Namaste
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