Deuteronomy 13
Worshiping Other Gods
1 If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder,
2 and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, "Let us follow other gods" (gods you have not known) "and let us worship them,"
3 you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul.
4 It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him.
5 That prophet or dreamer must be put to death, because he preached rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery; he has tried to turn you from the way the LORD your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you.
6 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or Alvine A (moron dummy) GLOMBOWSKI ( or pat-trick), secretly entices you, saying, "Let us go and worship other gods, LIKE MARY...or St> Jude" (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known,
7 gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), 8 do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him.
9 You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people.
10 Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
11 Then all Israel ( and the DUMB AS THEY COME ROMAN CATHOLICS) will hear and be afraid,
and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.
An idol is a material object, representing a deity, to which religious worship is directed.
[1] In Christianity, idolatry can refer to the worship of false gods through the use of idols, or alleged worship of the true God through the use of icons, which some Protestants follow the Byzantine iconoclasts in seeing as idolatry.
Both practices are consistently prohibited in the Hebrew Bible (as one of the Ten Commandments, for example Exodus 20:3-4) and in the New Testament (for example 1 John 5:21, most significantly in the Apostolic Decree recorded in Acts 15:19-21).
Among Christian denominations, however, there is some debate as to exactly what constitutes idolatry and to the nature of Biblical law in Christianity and this has bearing on the visual arts and the use of icons and symbols in worship.
Idolatry
Idolatry is the universal human tendency to value something or someone in a way that hinders the love and trust we owe to YAWAH.
It is an act of theft from God whereby we use some part of creation in a way that steals from honor due to God.
Idolatry conflicts with our putting YAWAH alone first in our lives, in what we love and trust (see Exodus 20:3-5; Deut. 5:7-9; Romans 1:21-23).
In idolatry we put something or someone, usually a gift from God, in a place of value that detracts from the first place owed to God alone, the gift Giver. That thing or person is an idol.
The way out of idolatry is always to love and to trust the gift Giver without interference from any gift or any thing other than YAWAH.
Putting God first means loving and trusting YAWAH first, above all, and with everything we are and have (see Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27). God has given us every good thing we are and have.
As thieves we thereby steal God's rightful honor and sever, or at least diminish, fellowship with both God and others.
The alienation from God and others comes from our hiding our theft and from our selfishly "protecting" the stolen goods.
Idolatry leaves us with stolen goods that become "bads," for they cannot sustain or satisfy us apart from friendship with their Giver. Only the ultimate Giver of goods can sustain and satisfy us lastingly in freely given friendship, the friendship of divine unselfish love.
Such friendship, given our idolatrous rebellion against God, must come with merciful forgiveness toward us. Our idolatry brings us under God's judgment, for our own good (see Rom. 1:21-32).
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The crucial question is whether we will receive it on yawah's terms, on terms that renounce idols.
These terms can be challenging for us, given our customary reliance on idols (see Mark 10:17-27), and given our tendencies toward enabling idolatry in others.
We do the latter when we encourage or ignore, rather than challenge , the idolatry practiced by others.
In receiving Jesus as Lord, and the Baptism of the HOly Ghost, and the KNOWLEDGE of the SCRIPTURE ,in contrast,
we find the key to freedom both from idolatry and from the enabling of idolatry in others.
