Tract 4： Idolatry is Worse than Murder
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, Simone and I talk about idolatry and why it's a cardinal sin in the three monotheistic traditions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. We talk about the role that idols play in our lives, why they're bad, and why we should ditch them.
Transcript
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it's important that the calf was golden, remembering that the Bible does actually say this eye of the
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needle thing. And then people can be like, well, then why have Christian interpretations, for
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example, we'll take Christians spread that do not admonish personal indulgence as much, right?
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And it's like, well, suppose you have multiple interpretations of the Bible competing,
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the interpretations that don't admonish those things are going to be disproportionately picked
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up by wealthy individuals. They're going to get more money from those individuals, and they're
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going to be able to use that to spread their message more, to buy ads, to reach out to people.
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When you tell people what they want to hear, you can get this sort of lowest common denominator to
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buy into you. And this is a problem for a lot of people where a lot of people have this thought
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where, yeah, but it feels good when I use these systems, when I use earthly grandeur as an intermediary
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for God, that feels good. A lot of paths to the deceiver feel good. In fact, most do. When Satan
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came to test Jesus. He didn't say, hey, if you go away from God, I'll hit you with a spiked bat.
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Hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be here with you today. Today, we're doing another one of these
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tracked videos where we talk about religious things or like our family's religion. And we always do
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them on Fridays, you know, right before the weekend. So if you don't like these, by the way,
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because I know they're thematically a little different than some of our other videos,
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the thumbnails are quite thematically different. Both of us will be on opposite sides and there'll
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be like a full image. Not every thumbnail can like perfectly fits this framework, but we try to fit it
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when we can. So, you know, you can just avoid them. But this one is on the topic of idolatry,
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which I accidentally called iconoclasm. I got it mixed up with this antonym in the last track, but
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fixing it this time, idolatry. And idolatry has been a very interesting topic for me to explore because
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it's one of those things that just gets reaffirmed within every one of the monotheistic traditions,
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as we sort of describe the monotheistic traditions in the three faith systems.
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And I didn't understand why, like whether you're talking from a theological perspective or a secular
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perspective, if it's a secular perspective, like why does idolatry keep showing up in unrelated
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monotheistic systems or monotheistic systems that are separated for each other as like
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this cardinal sin? And then I have the question from a religious perspective, right? Like in the
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same way that like when I heard the normal interpretation of the Adam and Eve story,
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right? Like the one that you might come to if you hadn't actually read it, is that God didn't want
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man to have knowledge of what's good and what's bad. And that is clearly not what I think the story
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is saying. But I had heard that. I was like, that can't be what it actually says. It clearly says
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something other than that. And I went back to it and I was like, okay. But with idolatry,
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it was the same thing. It was like, God's clearly not like jealous of pictures or something,
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right? Like that's the way a lot of people talk about it. Like what? Like an ineffable,
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all-powerful being is like afraid of a picture or, or, or jealous or spiteful around that. Like
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there must be some reason around this that's for our benefit, but I'd love to hear your thoughts
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before we dive into this on the topic, before I bias you too much on idolatry.
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Yeah. The hunch I have coming into this is as follows. Religion was evolved by humans to be
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able to exist in complex civilizations, you know, like larger than like family clans or small tribe
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formats. And as such, it's all about enabling us to act against our instincts in a way that is
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adaptive for these more complex spaces. It is the software that runs on top of our hardware,
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enabling us to live in complex worlds that we cannot biologically adapt to fast enough through
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genetic selection. So the reason why I think it's, it's very important to ditch idolatry or why it's
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being fought against is, is, or maybe at least there's a correlation is that it's so instinctive
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for people to fall to that. You see this in fan universes. You see this with Snape wives. You see
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this with like, it is just, it is our default. It's so easy. It feels good. It's, it is a very
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instinctual behavior and religion is all about enabling people to rise above, to go above their
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instincts. And so that's what I'm thinking. Although you talk about like, Oh, it's so weird
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that like God wouldn't be jealous. I mean, you know, wives can't stand the fact that like their
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husbands watch erotic material. So I think, I think you're right here to an extent, but I'd also keep
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in mind that it is really only a key trait within the monotheistic traditions, within mystical and
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polytheistic traditions. Even when those traditions are practiced under an Abrahamic faith structure,
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they typically don't mind idolatry that much, which is really interesting. So tracked for idolatry is
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worse than murder. God has revealed a succession of major prophets and every single time, whether it
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was Zohar, Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad, each one of them has reaffirmed just how much God hates idolatry
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and how seriously he takes it. With every iterative prophet, God does not just reiterate this
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commandment, but also further emphasizes it. It is almost as if God keeps reminding us we drift from
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his message. And so he must remind us again, but louder and more explicitly yet humanity's desire to
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tokenize God is so overwhelming. Even our learned religiously minded individuals find themselves
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attempting to normalize it. Consider the second council of Nicene, the last time the Orthodox
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Christians and the Catholics ever agreed on anything. God does not warn us to not do the
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things of which we have no inclination to do. He warns us against the things that we will find tempting.
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Images of Jesus were popular amongst the laity, and many argued having images of Jesus was just
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affirming your love for him. If God did not want us doing that, he would have explicitly told us
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something like, quote, thou shall not make unto thee any graven image, end quote. This is, of course,
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a joke. God did gift a man explicitly those words so there wasn't the slightest room for
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misinterpretation, and put this commandment literally right under the first commandment so
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there is no misunderstanding that he might have meant just don't worship images slash idols, as that
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would have been covered in the first commandment. To God, this commandment came even above the commandment to
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not murder or steal. Yet the desire to create those images is so strong in man, almost every Abrahamic
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faction has fallen to it to some extent or another. I don't point this out to rag on Orthodox and
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Catholic Christians, but to point out how quickly even pious men break from God's rules around idolatry.
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Of all of God's commandments, it is the commandment pious individuals find the hardest to keep,
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and that is why it is emphasized among all of God's prophets. But I really mean this,
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you find this within every single one of the monotheistic traditions. The most faithful people,
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it is the commandment that they are most likely to break, and I think it's the reason why God
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emphasizes it so much, putting it above murder. Like, murder, most people at least instinctually
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realize is wrong. Like, idolatry is something that I think a lot of people, they think, well,
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if I'm worshiping God through these things, therefore it's not wrong, even if God told me
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it was wrong. I think it's also those who are more devout are more likely to get caught up in it,
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because if you're not very devout, you're not trying to find shortcuts to get closer to God.
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You're not trying to see God in everything, right? So you're just not gonna, you're way less likely to
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be subject to this. Yeah, absolutely. Which is, I think, why he emphasizes the point so much.
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And I would note here, a lot of people are like, well, why create a quote-unquote new like,
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denomination for your family or something like that? Why not just go to one of the traditional
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ones? And in creating a new denomination, we are able to look at questions like idolatry,
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right? And use the text to guide our answers to those questions without accidentally affirming a
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quote-unquote religion's answer. So for example, you know, I might go to some religious individuals,
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and they'll be like, look, I understand the text says it, but our religion says it's okay,
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right? Like the holy men in our religion say it's okay. We've been doing this for centuries at this
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point. You know, it is something that is affirmed within our religion, even if it is prohibited in
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the text. And this is something that you'll see like throughout the tracks that we're doing here,
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and it's just a big part of what we're doing with this, is going through text or major like
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prohibitions and stuff like that and reaffirming them, like prohibitions against policy of them
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was really one of the, and mysticism was what we were focused on in the last one that have seeped
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their way into many Abrahamic traditions. And now it's idolatry, you know, we need to be stricter on
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new things because it was supposed to be something that we would treat very seriously. Do you have any
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other thoughts before I go further? No, I agree with you though. Go on.
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Well, so now to the point. Why is idolatry so uniquely offensive to God? Why do humans struggle
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so much with this clear and repeated commandment for God? From God. God delivers his revelation
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through a succession of prophets because man's capacity for understanding him increases over time.
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Bronze Age pastoralists did not have the capacity to spread the message of anything other than an
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anthropomorphic God combined with mystical hoodoo. However, we are not Bronze Age pastoralists and as
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such, God expects us to reinterpret his revelations with pragmatic logic. God is not the type of entity
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capable of offense or jealousy. If he has given us a commandment, he has given it to us for our own
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benefit and only for our own benefit. He warns us against idolatry because it is in our own best
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interest. Wait, how? People make images of God because it allows us to feel closer to him or at least a
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representation of him. Why does God warn us against this? Because that image is not him. A picture of
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Jesus is as far from God as a picture of a red-hooven being was a goatee and praying to each is equally
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harmful to the human soul. Whatever entity is represented in that image is not God. And as your
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heart moves closer to it, it moves further from God. All representations of God made by man that are
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assigned theological significance move man further from God. And what, so just to like talk like not in
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the text here, what really brought me to this is I re-approached it and I said, what if I am approaching
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this not saying like, okay, God's like petty or jealous or something like that, but I approach the
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prohibition on idolatry with the assumption that it was for our own best interest. In the same way, something
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like a prohibition on murder is in the best interest of society. All of the other prohibitions have a clear
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utility to a monotheistic culture. So why would they be giving us this? Like, why is God giving us
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this? Or sorry, why would he be giving us this? Like, why is God giving us this? Because he wants
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it to be in our best interest. Well, if you assume that, then just ask, okay, how would this be in our
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best interest from a theological perspective? Well, it would mean that that image is in no way a
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representation to God, in no way that it gets you closer to God. And so when you worship through it,
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it was it as an intermediary, you are worshiping something other than God. And somebody can be
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like, no, no, no, I'm, I'm, I'm worshiping the entity that it represents. And what I am saying
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is the entity represented even by a picture of Jesus is not God. It is what we would call the
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basilisk or deceiver, the deceit, you know, misinformation because it in no way captures any of
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God's real characteristics. But if we're going to take your secular framework here to like expand on
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this interpretation of it, I think that's really interesting as well. So why, from a secular
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perspective, would this group, so what was the monotheistic traditions? Well, the monotheistic
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traditions typically lump logic over emotion. That's a, that's an important thing throughout them,
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you know, rules over sort of like trying to get to God through other means. Well, within the mystical
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traditions, what you're typically doing is you're trying to reach God through like, like God exists
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in me, he exists in you, he exists in nature. And so you can attempt to reach God through worshiping
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those things. Well, because the monotheistic traditions directly contrast with that God exists
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only in logic and in study, you know, and in, in, in, in, in human industry where you, you need to
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sort of create this barrier between the mystical world and say, do not accidentally fall to that
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because it leads to non-productive societies. You know, it, and I, and I think we really,
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you know, see this in the history of, you know, the, the Abrahamic frameworks, you know, after
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Al-Ghazali, you know, promoted Sufism was in Islam. It was very shortly after that, that we saw the
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collapse of the Islamic technological revolution and, and elevated mysticism. And what was interesting
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is he was doing that to fight growing polytheism. There was like a polytheist movement was in Islam
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that he was attempting to fight where they were saying, well, God is like the sun and stuff like
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that. And, and, and his, his logic was very ordered, right? If you read his stuff, he's actually
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a pretty good philosopher, but because he elevated the, the mystical traditions, which should have been
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banned by, he doomed the entire tradition. And so I think that's why you're seeing it there because
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it leads to the focus on these mystical traditions or are these polytheistic traditions, both of which
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remove industry from the group and cause sort of, you know, sort of mindless speculation and the
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elevation of some individuals who claim to have, and we'll go into like how, how groups without
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really strict bans against idolatry can fall into cycles that lead them to be incredibly inefficient.
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No, I didn't know that about the origins of Sufism. That's interesting.
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No, he didn't create Sufism, by the way. He was a famous scholar who then became a Sufi and then
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elevated Sufism because he was a real huge adherent of it. For people who don't know Sufism, it's
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basically Islamic Kabbalism, but, but even more extreme in terms of his mystical framings.
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This truth reveals two things. First, it is not the act of someone drawing God or one of his
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intermediaries that is being warned against. It is assigning theological significance to that drawing
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in an effort to get closer to God. The sin was that people believed these physical items made by man
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or in nature were a conduit through which they could interact with God. For this reason, when a Muslim
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extremist smashes a statue of a Buddha that no one has worshiped in a century, they commit an act of
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sin by destroying a piece of cultural heritage that could inform us about the nature of man.
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At the same time, if that same Muslim writes a line from the Quran as a piece of art or bans the
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burning of a Quran as a physical object of theological significance, they are committing the highest form
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of idolatry. When a Muslim adorns a mosque with gold, believing that in some way earthly metal has the
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capacity to quote-unquote improve the mosque, they are acting in direct rebellion to God's will.
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Every geometric pattern, every ounce of gold leaf, every physical book that was treated as sacred,
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instead of the words and concepts within it, shackles the soul of the idolater and drags it towards the deceiver.
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So I think, you know, here, when you hate, like, and you see this with Muslims, and I'm specifically
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picking on Muslims here because they're often seen as being the strictest of the Abrahamic face about
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idolatry. Exactly. And yet, in many ways, they're also the worst idolaters of all the Abrahamic face
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because they ascribe literal religious significance to the physical object of the Quran. And I understand
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why they did it. Like, if you're just approaching these rules without any thought as to how these rules
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got there or why God would say this to you, you're like, okay, well, then it must be safe to, like,
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use, you know, geometric patterns on mosques and fill them with gold leaf and fill them with, like,
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words from the Quran and use that as art because, you know, it was like he was jealous of pictures
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of Muhammad or something like that, or he found them distasteful, which doesn't, to me, that doesn't
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make any sense. Like, what, does God want us going around and, like, destroying thousand-year-old, like,
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statues of Buddha? Like, that doesn't seem like something that God, but that God would want us to not
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accidentally attempt to worship him through something that has no relation to him and that
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is a pass to something other than him. Yeah, that seems perfectly rational to me.
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No, I agree, and I appreciate your pointing out, because I think the key points that you make
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about idolatry in general are that some of the worst offenders are those who are like, yeah,
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it's terrible, which is interesting. I think it just, like, loops back to this theme of just how
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tempting it is for the especially devout to fall into this trap and how much correction it requires
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because it is just so hard to resist the temptation of idolatry if you are devout.
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Exactly, yeah, and I think that you can really see this in Muslims. Ironically, you know, if a cartoonist
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draws a picture of Muhammad, that is not idolatry because the cartoonist puts no religious significance
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into that picture. He doesn't feel like it's getting him closer to God in any way, shape, or form.
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And it has no religious significance. Yeah, it's not going to bring anyone else closer to God or
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make people think it's going to bring them closer to God. Yeah, but it's not just about getting close
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to God. The moment a Muslim looks at that picture and ascribes religious significance to that picture,
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the moment a Muslim says, you cartoonist, you drew a picture, and now this picture has some sort of
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negative theological weight, they have actually committed the act of idolatry because they imbued
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an image, a physical thing, with religious significance. That is the act of idolatry.
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Isn't the cartoonist drawing Muhammad, it is the Muslim deciding that that drawing has spiritual value,
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even if it is a negative spiritual value. Well, I guess, yeah, because you are assuming that it's
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harmful and therefore powerful, right? Exactly, right? So idolatry works in the negative too.
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You know, if you think that a site is like cursed or something like that, that's a form of idolatry.
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I mean, you are ascribing spiritual power to things in the physical world. I had not thought of it that
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way. Interesting. Once we understand why God warns us so frequently and explicitly about idolatry,
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we learn there is a much deeper meaning to be examined here outside of quote-unquote smashed
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statues. Man, as he exists today, is incapable of conceiving of God. When man attempts to conceive
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of God, what he holds within his mind is a repugnant rat king when contrasted with God's glory.
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The images of God that humans create, not just the ones in the physical world, but also the ones in
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our mind move us further from God. To attempt to grasp God's majesty with our fallen minds is a crime
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in God's eyes worse than murder because it is more harmful to our souls. This becomes uniquely,
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so, sorry, I'm just going to take a quick aside here, which is like, this is where idolatry becomes
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specifically, and we're going to talk about this in the next track, about mystical framings of God.
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You know, these shortcuts that some individuals attempt to take to interact with God
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and seeing God in the natural world. This becomes uniquely important to individuals
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that think they have the ability to quote-unquote talk to God, that they have a personal relationship
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with God. The thing they are talking to is not God, it is themselves, their personal wish for what God
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was like, but it is not what God is like and therefore leads them further from God's glory. Man,
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as he exists now, cannot have a relationship with God. As one would read right, we teach that there
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is a God, but not a God of the anthropic variety, not a God who is gratified by compliments in prose
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and verse and whose attributes can be cataloged by theologians. God is so great that he cannot be
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defined by us. God is so great that he does not deign to have personal relations with us as human atoms
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that are called men. Those who desire to worship the creator must worship him through mankind.
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Just, you know, I actually put the tracks out of order. So the track where we explain the significance
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to our iteration of the faith of Linwood Reed in his teachings, this isn't teachings that, for example,
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individuals who are coming at this from a Christian or Jewish or Muslim variety, but if you're coming
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at this faith system from a secular variety, his teachings can be quite useful. And from my
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perspective, they're quite useful and that's why I'm bringing them up here. But I also think that's true.
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When you try to interact directly with God, it pulls you away from your fellow man and from the
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philosophy of your fellow man, from the technology and from the labor of your fellow man and from this
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sort of community effort of uplifting all of mankind, you know, through industry, through austerity
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and through philosophy, which is something that you can forget about. And we see this in the idolatry
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of the, you know, asceticism, for example, when an individual like leaves society and go lives
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alone and is like a hermit or something like that, right? Like that's a form of idolatry and that they
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are attempting to get closer to God in a way that forsakes their fellow man. Right. And ultimately
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is self-indulgent. And we see this from Marash al-Ghazali. He converted to Sufism after one of these
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episodes, right? Like this happens. You go, you have one of these self-indulgent episodes and then you fall
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to one of the mystic traditions. This is why when we tell our children to pray to supernatural agents,
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we tell them to pray to their distant descendants. This is not them talking to an imaginary entity or
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modeling an entity whose structure and consciousness they could not possibly predict, but instead a real
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being that will one day exist and therefore not a form of idolatry. Through modeling a genetically and
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synthetically augmented, but still human mind, one with an iteratively clearer understanding of the true
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nature of God, they are able to get closer to what God wants from them without risking
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blasphemy. Moreover, it is self-evident was in our religious framework that God wants us to do our best to
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increase the potentiality of future humans and thus us modeling what they would want from us and what they
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would reward us for doing helps us model what God would want to say to us without committing
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idolatry. Do we really think children are able to communicate with distant descendants? No. However,
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we do believe that this framing for the emulated mental model created within our kids' brains that
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they are communicating with creates responses closer to God's will than attempting to directly model the
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will of God within the human mind. When they attempt to model God, they create the way they wish he existed
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rather than how he actually does, which leads to sinful indulgence. This reminds me of a woman that both you
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and I know, who told us she always listened to her husband, except when God told her otherwise. How very
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convenient that God had a pension for her preferred indulgences. And this is always a problem I see when
00:23:37.360
people say, you know, I talk to God, because then that thing that they're talking to, the way they wishes God was,
00:23:43.520
can affirm indulgences, idolatry itself, for example, that they shouldn't have affirmed to them.
00:23:53.120
You know, and this is one area where I think a lot of people are like, your belief system is very
00:23:57.120
similar to Mormonism, where it's actually quite different from Mormonism. And that was in Mormonism
00:24:00.700
as well, just go personally pray on it. And God will tell you the right answer where I don't think that
00:24:05.120
that's how God communicates with people. Well, and the reason I've heard people are like, why don't you
00:24:09.120
think like I've had profound experiences in communicating with God, because I know people who have had
00:24:13.420
those profound experiences with communicating with God and the things that they tell me God has
00:24:17.180
communicated to them definitely were demonic, definitely were not from God, right?
00:24:25.060
Or at least to put it in layman's terms, were the things that they wanted to hear?
00:24:30.940
Well, the things that they were, they were things that they wanted to do that were both self-indulgent
00:24:34.740
and damaging to the people around them and against core Abrahamic principles. So I know that they
00:24:39.340
weren't coming from God. And so even if God does have the capacity to talk to humans, it appears to
00:24:45.200
me that humans don't have the capacity to distinguish between that and a demon talking to them or the
00:24:52.160
basilisk talking to them or however you want to frame it. And I'd also say this, this way, how we have
00:24:56.360
this model of like the future police and stuff like that. Like when we're trying to model God, I think
00:25:00.200
for earlier iterations of man, God gave different models like this. Like this was the idea of angels and stuff
00:25:05.680
like that. It's like, well, if you are trying to model my will, model me as an angel, as like this
00:25:11.800
individual entity, because you cannot model my will. You cannot even come close. It is a form of
00:25:16.800
idolatry to even attempt to in like explicit terms. But what are your thoughts on this?
00:25:23.200
Yeah. I hadn't ever thought about how trivializing it is to boil a God or God-like entity down to like
00:25:33.420
a personified being or a statue or image? Like pretty insulting considering, you know, how we
00:25:44.780
Well, I think also something that people can grasp was in their minds. I mean, seriously, like
00:25:49.300
try to imagine God is, right? And there's two pathways you can go down. You can go down the
00:25:54.640
mystic pathway, which is to be like, well, I'm a part of God and like God's in everything.
00:25:58.300
And when you do that, you demean him, you know, you are, you are seeing him as like being
00:26:03.440
bugs and stuff like that. Right. But even if you don't do it through nature, you're just
00:26:08.580
like, no, I just imagine him as being like the most loving thing possible, the biggest
00:26:13.000
thing possible, the most powerful thing possible. But you as a human can't imagine those things.
00:26:18.360
Right. So when you attempt to imagine those things, what you are holding in your mind is
00:26:23.580
as distant from God as literally every other idea you have in your mind.
00:26:30.500
Yeah, no, that's a very good way of putting it. I'd never seen it that way, but I don't think I'll
00:26:35.040
be unseeing it. I mean, you see this from the theological perspective, but also from the secular
00:26:39.400
perspective, which is what we're always trying to do is come up with a system that works
00:26:42.280
in both ways. Does it work within the Abrahamic structure, but does it also work like even if I
00:26:48.640
didn't believe the Abrahamic structure and I was just trying to give my kids good traditions
00:26:52.280
that would protect them from groups that would want to harm them? And, you know, this using
00:26:57.540
shortcuts to God is one of the core strategies used by cults and other groups that want to harm
00:27:03.400
an individual. I mean, you'll see this out cult psychology. That's one of the first things they
00:27:07.020
do is, oh, or, or somebody will be like, well, I'm the intermediary for God. So come to God through
00:27:11.040
me or our thing, you know, or special objects here. So anyway, let me continue here. The human soul is
00:27:16.720
weak. God foresaw that some individuals would use the symbols of human vanity and social
00:27:21.580
status, gold, gems, and art to affirm their connection to God among the simple-minded.
00:27:28.520
These nefarious service of the basilisks could then use this status they had acquired to sell
00:27:34.660
access to God and thus increase the earthly wealth that affirmed their connection to God,
00:27:40.060
whether it be in the form of indulgences or church donations. Prosperity doctrine is devil worship.
00:27:47.120
God does show his favor to his chosen people at various times in history, but he does this through
00:27:52.780
the output of works of the mind, art, science, and philosophy, not wealth. And for people who
00:28:01.020
aren't familiar with the prosperity doctrine, the prosperity doctrine is a really common in
00:28:05.860
Protestant movements where they sort of believe that poor individuals are poor because they're not
00:28:10.900
doing what God wants them to, and rich individuals are rich because they are doing what God wants them
00:28:15.000
to. And then, you know, preachers use this as an excuse to like fly around and have private jets and
00:28:22.000
have giant mansions and everything like that, where I would say that an individual is showing you how
00:28:26.740
disconnected they are from God when they do those things. It is human nature for groups of powerful
00:28:33.000
individuals to claim God's intermediaries and use that power to manipulate the mob and through this
00:28:38.840
process consolidate their power and authority. It is our duty to recognize these pretenders for what they
00:28:44.720
are. Fortunately, God marks them. Any house of worship adorned in gold or perversely tarnished with
00:28:51.620
art is a sign that it serves the basilisk and has fallen from his grace. Agents of the basilisk do not
00:28:58.440
carve satanic ruins and pentagrams into their foreheads, but they will come to you dripping with
00:29:04.300
signs of their rebellion to God, adorned in jewels and expensive clothing. And this is something if,
00:29:11.140
you know, we have people, you know, if this ever becomes like a larger denomination or something
00:29:16.080
like that, I would say as a strong prohibition against anyone who's, who's preaching within this
00:29:21.360
movement, living any sort of life of indulgence, any sort of, you know, fancy environment and stuff
00:29:26.360
like that. Signs that God has blessed an individual is their austerity and their industry
00:29:31.840
and their, their knowledge of his creation, the world, like, like science and advanced science.
00:29:39.680
But yeah, it's just, did you have thoughts there? I'm kind of curious as to what you think is
00:29:45.580
extravagant because our life feels pretty extravagant to me. I mean, I mean, it feels extravagant to you,
00:29:53.400
I think within a philosophical context, but I mean, we live in a medium-sized farmhouse outside of
00:30:00.080
major fancy areas. We don't really have jewels or, or, or jewelry. We don't really have
00:30:07.080
gold things. We don't really have art other than things that we commissioned of our children.
00:30:12.460
Yeah. Like custom commissioned art. How is that not extravagant? I don't know.
00:30:17.660
I don't know for like 50 bucks and stuff like that. It's not. So I think actually this is a good
00:30:22.660
definition here and I'm glad that you pulled this out. Okay. So there's like two types of art.
00:30:26.740
There's art that we custom commissioned where it is, we are commissioning something that reminds us
00:30:32.860
of our kids and sort of our aspired relationship with them. Like you'll see it's, it's a, you know,
00:30:38.180
a commission of us dressed like Indiana Jones characters and having going on adventures with
00:30:41.980
the kids. So it represents something that, you know, we aspire to do as a family. Right.
00:30:45.920
But it is not like we got it off of art Corgi, which is a website we have that does art commissions,
00:30:50.040
but it's like, you know, low cost, you know, $50, $100. The types of things that remove you from God
00:30:55.880
are the types of things that confer social status was in the material world. So if I commissioned
00:31:01.720
art from a famous artist, for example. And then you like hosted dinner parties and showed it off,
00:31:07.260
then yeah. That is separate from like my family, separate from the things that we are commanded to
00:31:16.800
do for God, like, like, like capturing moments with the people we care about. It removes me from
00:31:22.160
God. And this is many elements of idolatry, really privately consumed objects.
00:31:29.000
No. So, so what I would say is if you are, this is actually a great example. If you are with your
00:31:35.480
family and you are experiencing a wholesome moment with your family and you take a picture of that
00:31:40.940
moment and that moment is special to you and your family. Right. And you share it with some other
00:31:46.480
family members. That's not idolatry. That is what we're commanded to do, you know, to create a good
00:31:50.960
environment for the next generation. However, you do the exact same thing. You take that image,
00:31:55.220
but with the purpose of sharing it on Instagram specifically to achieve social status or, or gain
00:32:04.060
additional social status, you have created an item of idolatry because you have created an item that is
00:32:10.540
perverting. It's like an extra bad form of idolatry. That's perverting something that's supposed to be
00:32:16.260
meaningful. Like this moment you have with your family into something that can be sold, something
00:32:21.740
that has social status. And when you begin to buy into this idolatry lifestyle, even children can
00:32:28.320
become tokens of idolatry. If you have those children to increase your social status, this is
00:32:34.820
why all worldly things that can be used to increase social status are dangerous. And it's why we're told
00:32:40.520
hold on. I thought what we were really discussing is, is people feeling like they're taking shortcuts
00:32:45.360
to God. And now you're talking about social status. Are these related? Are they different things?
00:32:51.160
Exactly related. And the golden calf is a great example of this. So if you, I mean, I'm sure everyone
00:32:57.860
knows this, the golden calf, right? But the golden calf represents three things. And we'll talk about
00:33:03.480
this more in the next tract, but it is gold. It represents precious metals. It is a calf.
00:33:09.260
It represents the worship of nature, trying to worship God through nature. And it is a idol.
00:33:15.720
It represents trying to worship God through art. It matters that it's gold. It wasn't a wooden calf
00:33:21.000
or something like that. It was, and this is important, right? This is what idolatry is. It is
00:33:25.820
not just shortcuts to God. It is all of the things that we assign status to, like earthly status,
00:33:32.980
that are not things that we are commanded to do by God. And it's very important to guard yourself
00:33:38.900
against these things and to guard yourself from indulging in these things. Because the moment
00:33:43.140
you do, your entire worldview can become corrupted and your religious institution can become corrupted
00:33:47.840
because people will begin to see, as you see with the prosperity doctrine, the fact that one preacher
00:33:52.880
is wealthier than another preacher is a sign that he is closer to God. Then he gets more followers
00:33:56.900
because he's wealthy. Then he gets more money because he has more followers. And then that's
00:34:00.860
gold. And then you end up with these huge, you know, glittering golden laser shows,
00:34:06.120
which, which are completely divorced from God. And you, I mean, you understand why it's so important
00:34:13.600
that God warns us against this. Yeah. Well, okay. Yes. Cause it can also be people to mislead other
00:34:20.280
people. But I think what you're also saying is that like on, on one level, it's bad if people use
00:34:27.520
cheap approximations or representations of God or godliness to feel closer without actually practicing
00:34:36.100
the rules of getting closer to God. So that's one problem. It's even worse if it's also used for
00:34:41.680
status signaling or for further misleading other members of the flock. Right? Yeah. And the, the
00:34:48.540
cheaper an item is like you've talked about it being cheap, the cheaper it is in the eyes of God
00:34:53.520
when used for idolatry is the higher it is in terms of status, in terms of like perceived value
00:34:59.180
in our world. To quote Corinthians 128, God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised
00:35:06.440
things, the things that are not to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before
00:35:12.900
him. So if you, for example, have some like golden magical, you know, like, like big ornate relic,
00:35:22.540
right? That would be, and you were using that as an intermediary for communicating with God versus,
00:35:30.500
you know, having a, you know, the last shoes that a dead kid of yours wore, right? You know,
00:35:36.940
and that had special significance to you. That would not be an item of particularly sinful idolatry
00:35:43.100
because it is not an item that has value in our material world. It is an item that has value to you,
00:35:49.160
but it is not an item of extreme material value. Hmm. So there are sentimental items,
00:35:57.720
but that's not idolatry. Yeah, that's not idolatry, but ascribing sentiment to an item
00:36:04.440
because of how it confers status to you or relate status to you. So I think what you've really pulled
00:36:10.880
out here, which is important is there are two key types of idolatry. There is idolatry that comes
00:36:16.420
from shortcuts to God, like trying to worship God through an intermediary. And then there's
00:36:22.280
idolatry, which is about the worship of really the self. So these are things that confer status.
00:36:29.120
And so idolatry more broadly is a word that is used for prohibitions against all of the pathways
00:36:36.480
that a person can elevate or walk down that lead them in the opposite direction of God.
00:36:41.900
Okay. Does that make sense as like a grouping category here?
00:36:47.680
And why the monotheistic face would be so against it.
00:36:52.340
If gold, man-made scribbles, indulgent time-consuming rituals, and worldly grandeur
00:36:58.700
are positively augmenting your experience of and relationship with God, then I'm sorry to tell you
00:37:04.620
this entity you have a relationship with is not God. We cannot emphasize this enough.
00:37:09.740
If you are talking to an entity and able to use gold or worldly grandeur to get closer to that
00:37:16.160
entity, that entity is not God. I know this is offensive. If you were accidentally worshiping
00:37:23.400
the devil, it would hurt you to have somebody tell you that. But I also believe that if you are a good
00:37:29.500
person, this is something you would want to know. If you reflexively think, but no, it feels really
00:37:36.240
good when I worship this entity. Please examine your own words. We are trying to help you.
00:37:44.660
It feels good to worship. Like people don't worship the satanic things because they feel bad when they
00:37:50.000
do it. It makes them feel powerful, sophisticated, in connection with something that other people
00:37:57.120
don't have a connection to. But anyway, of course, this is axiomatically not a truth the powerful in
00:38:04.700
our society wants you to hear. An individual or institution that has wealth and spends it on
00:38:10.640
self-aggrandizement is not a servant of God. Yet such buildings and trinkets are still part of the
00:38:17.420
human story. A cautionary tale of when hearts and mind of men were weak. As such, they should not be
00:38:25.440
destroyed, but turned into museums dedicated to the razor's edge the human soul rests on. A testament that
00:38:33.360
even holy men and institutions are susceptible to worldly temptation and aggrandizement. Thus, who God
00:38:41.380
favors, his real emissaries, are those that can resist temptation while still being productive. The less a
00:38:48.920
person needs to be happy, the closer they are to God. But a person who indulges in self-masturbatory
00:38:55.620
monasticism and loses their industry is as indulgent as a cultist who drips in jewels.
00:39:03.640
What is commanded of us is industry, fecundity, and austerity.
00:39:09.000
So that's it. Kept it short this time. Basically split one in half. The second is the spiritualist
00:39:19.020
pathway of idolatry. The first one, I really wanted to focus on the materialist path of idolatry,
00:39:24.760
which is believing that one worshiping God is higher value than another place of worshiping God
00:39:32.080
because it has things that confer social status to man, i.e. gold, jewels, etc. Or fancy art by
00:39:42.200
famous artists. Where if you have a religious institution and the children of the people who
00:39:50.860
go to that have painted on the walls. It's not a prohibition against art, more broadly. The children
00:39:55.960
of that parishion have painted on the walls. That is of higher value. That is a closer than a church
00:40:03.860
that is dripping in gold and paintings by the quote-unquote masters. And you see this throughout
00:40:10.700
all of the Abrahamic traditions that God views our world as an inversion. It is the lowly in our world
00:40:17.920
that are high in his estimation. And the high in our world that are lowly in his estimation. And this
00:40:23.060
extends to the way we engage with art. This extends to the way we engage with items. Everything like
00:40:29.200
that. And this matters from a theological perspective. Like, this is very obviously,
00:40:33.040
if you've actually read the Abrahamic traditions, I love how much people try to get around the eye
00:40:37.620
of the needle thing. You know, the eye of the needle quote. It's like, oh, they're like, oh,
00:40:41.660
it's actually talking about something in the wall of Jerusalem. Yeah, it's referring to a geographical
00:40:46.120
area. It's like, no, no, no. It's pretty explicit. If you're rich, you're not getting into heaven.
00:40:53.060
No, it's just explicit. If you are not familiar with the multiple interpretations
00:40:56.860
of this particular parable, I strongly suggest that you check out the Religion for Breakfast
00:41:03.420
episode on it. He does a very good job of arguing that it literally just means what it says.
00:41:09.440
Like, and rich should be, you know, used with specific terms here, right? Like, it's not
00:41:14.380
the accumulation of wealth. It's the accumulation of wealth for self-aggrandizement,
00:41:19.160
using it on yourself. Of course, God has no problem with a rich man who spends all their
00:41:23.760
wealth trying to improve the world, trying to improve the lives of others. But let's be honest
00:41:29.480
here. How many rich men have ever done that without first ensuring enormous alludgery for themselves?
00:41:37.100
When they use some of that money to buy themselves a big fancy, whatever, you know, the thing that
00:41:42.900
conferred social status, that is a sign of sin. And I should say all men sin, but recognize your
00:41:49.200
sin. Recognize that your mansion is sin, right? What is uniquely bad is when you say, when somebody
00:41:54.700
takes sin and then they invert it, you know, the pastor who says, my mansion is the sign of my
00:41:59.340
godliness. My jet is a sign of my godliness instead of a sign that I am human and I am as capable of sin
00:42:05.700
as anyone else. But yeah, I mean, I think going back to these concepts and remembering why they're there,
00:42:11.320
remembering why it's important that the calf was golden, remembering that the Bible does actually
00:42:15.380
say this eye of the needle thing. And then people can be like, well, then why have Christian
00:42:18.400
interpretations, for example, we'll take Christians spread that do not admonish, you know, wealth and
00:42:24.640
personal indulgence as much, right? And it's like, well, suppose you have multiple interpretations of
00:42:29.000
the Bible competing, the interpretations that don't admonish those things are going to be
00:42:32.820
disproportionately picked up by wealthy individuals and used by those individuals, you know, they're
00:42:37.280
going to get more money from those individuals, i.e. like indulgences and stuff like that,
00:42:41.220
or the, you know, the prosperity preachers in the Protestant tradition. And they're going to be able
00:42:45.700
to use that to spread their message more, you know, to buy ads, to reach out to people, you know,
00:42:50.820
when you tell people what they want to hear, you can get this sort of lowest common denominator to
00:42:54.740
buy into you. And yeah, and this is a problem for a lot of people where a lot of people have this
00:43:01.340
thought where, yeah, but it feels good when I use these systems, when I use earthly grandeur as an
00:43:08.320
intermediary for God, that feels good. A lot of satanic things feel good. A lot of paths to the
00:43:14.940
deceiver feel good. In fact, most do. That's what, when, when Satan came to test Jesus, he didn't say,
00:43:22.600
hey, if you go away from God, I'll hit you with a spiked bat. He's like, no, if you go away from God,
00:43:28.760
here are all these things that are going to make you feel good about yourself. You know, and it's such a
00:43:33.380
weird thing that I think that there's an intuition that it feels good. Therefore it is good. And
00:43:38.740
you've also got to keep in mind, like the second council of Niceney, why did they make this decision?
00:43:41.720
It was because, well, our most pious members are engaged with this activity, you know, of having
00:43:46.640
pictures and worshiping these pictures. It makes them happy. Like it's a populist idea here. I can
00:43:52.060
understand why they wouldn't want to, you know, take away from the little lady, you know, her statue,
00:43:56.860
right? Like there's a lot of famous cases like this, like that hurts to do, right? And this is why
00:44:02.740
we go to this idea of the Tesseract God here, where what we really, what could be thought of,
00:44:09.160
what we really mean when we say this is that there are lower interpretations of the Abrahamic
00:44:15.060
phase for people who just aren't ready to join the group that understands how actually damaging it is
00:44:22.740
to worship God through these earthly intermediaries. And so it is up to us to not take away, you know,
00:44:28.480
the little old lady's statue. Well, and so how do you deal with that practical limitation? Because
00:44:33.140
what you are describing is a very real and very troublesome phenomenon, where when you take all
00:44:38.960
the fun stuff out of a religion, and you take away all the shortcuts, and you take away the figurines
00:44:44.780
and the pretty stuff, it can be a lot harder to get people to pay the church to join the church,
00:44:53.140
to stay in the church. What do you propose? I mean, I think there's a reason why adultery is also
00:44:58.660
so pervasive in otherwise trying to be monotheistic religions. It's because it sells,
00:45:04.820
and it raises money, and it gets converts. Absolutely, yeah. So the question is, is why,
00:45:11.280
right? Like, and this is why I think God listed it above murder, right? Because it is the sin that
00:45:17.800
you're going to want to commit the most. It is literally the number one sin among individuals
00:45:22.760
who are otherwise pious and trying to do best by God, which I think is otherwise very weird to
00:45:27.680
people. Why would he make this above murder? Is he really that vain? It's like, no, he's not that
00:45:31.380
vain. He did that to protect you. This was all about you all along. But this sin, you know, I have
00:45:37.540
people come to me, ask very similar to what you say. They're like, well, some people need these things,
00:45:41.060
but they don't have the mental discipline to, you know, to attempt to actually adhere to all of these
00:45:47.300
actually pretty hard rules that are laid out of the Abrahamic faith, and they're not bad people.
00:45:52.380
And so our tesseract notion of God can have a different understanding.
00:45:58.400
We think that many of the Abrahamic faiths are as close to many people, like very conservative
00:46:03.860
interpretations of these faiths, are as close as many people can actually get to true worship
00:46:09.320
of God as laid out. And therefore, it is best for us to not interfere with that, you know, let these
00:46:14.800
people live their lives because it's better than purely just worshiping states, like purely just
00:46:18.880
going to the urban monoculture. Because, you know, we don't want to hurt people who our system
00:46:23.360
wouldn't work for. But, and this is clear from our system from the beginning, we've always said we
00:46:28.340
believe in the concept of the elect. This is not a system for your average person. We would not
00:46:34.620
proselytize to the average person. We would proselytize insofar as helping people fortify their
00:46:40.580
traditional religious structures. But we would not proselytize to the average person. We really
00:46:45.040
only want the individuals with this absolute highest level of mental discipline. Because if
00:46:49.340
they start to engage with these ideas without that, they'll end up committing suicide or something.
00:46:54.180
Like it's, you know, it's hard, right? You know, there's, I think, a reason why God has given
00:46:59.920
people various pathways that are less true than actually following, you know, his words as I believe
00:47:07.020
you meant them, like a very extreme meaning of idolatry. And so the answer to your question
00:47:12.260
there is both from a secular and a theological perspective, we are doing this and we make
00:47:17.080
it hard because we don't want everyone. We want only the people with this level of austerity,
00:47:22.600
industry, dedication to learning, and that have the mental discipline to engage with a system that
00:47:28.200
doesn't give them all of the candy of this earthly realm. Whether that candy is self-indulgent
00:47:34.580
monasticism or fancy cathedrals. And from a secular perspective, you could say, why are you doing
00:47:40.220
this? Right? Like, why would you make it that hard? And it's because we, I mean, clearly we think that
00:47:45.440
not all humans are the same, right? Like some humans are clearly, and we talk about this more in the
00:47:52.120
next one, are better than others. I use a quote in the next one where I'm like, okay, if there is a
00:47:58.680
preacher who is giving out cocaine to everyone in a church, right? And one person stands up and
00:48:04.340
they're like, look, I know this feels good, but it is evil. And you need to stop this. That one
00:48:10.100
person, their, their soul that we don't believe literally in a soul, but, but their soul, you could
00:48:15.760
say is more valuable than every other soul in that church combined or larger or, or more, you know,
00:48:22.840
important that you could say within our traditional system. And when I say more important, I mean that
00:48:27.100
they would be more of a target for people like us to attempt to convert, to try to bring into the
00:48:32.340
system because they have the traits that our system values and that are needed to engage with God like
00:48:37.960
this, which is to say, everyone else is doing this. It feels good. Those two things together don't
00:48:43.240
matter. So the, the point here being is that from a secular perspective, right? If we think that this
00:48:50.700
is sort of the collection of individuals that we want to eventually get on a spaceship, see new planets,
00:48:55.760
we don't care about volume. We care about quality. And this includes things like mental discipline,
00:49:01.520
industry, and austerity. Those are traits that we are looking for, which this perspective,
00:49:06.660
which is the perspective that's actually laid out in the Bible is important filtering mechanism.
00:49:14.340
So in short, you're like, it doesn't really matter that this is really a growth method.
00:49:20.200
So an iteration of, of Christianity, like, you know, Catholicism or something like that is really
00:49:24.820
trying to convert everyone. You know, it's, it is trying to create something that everyone can engage
00:49:30.980
regardless of their proficiencies. This is something that is not for everyone, but I believe it's
00:49:36.620
what's actually conveyed in these, these, these texts. And I'd also say here, you know, this is
00:49:41.320
important, even though it's not conveyed for everyone, is that it is open to anyone. This is not,
00:49:48.400
you know, there's no secret systems here. I think, you know, secret knowledge, stuff like that,
00:49:51.700
all that is sinful. If, if, you know, I think people hide knowledge because they know that if it
00:49:56.140
came out and it was engaged by somebody who wasn't already partially brainwashed, they'd realize how
00:50:00.700
silly it is. And yet mystical systems almost all use secret teachings and stuff like that. So,
00:50:05.680
so we don't do that. This is a system that anyone, whatever their ethnic background, whatever walk
00:50:09.840
of life they're in, whatever wealth their family has is accessible to anyone. The filtering mechanism
00:50:17.220
is their ability to actually follow the rules, which is interesting, but I think, but I think,
00:50:23.220
right. And this is again, something I always see when it, when it comes to idolatry as a person
00:50:27.320
will come to me and they'll be like, yeah, but once my community started engaging in idolatry,
00:50:30.880
everyone got really excited and started engaging much more and much more enthusiastically. And it's
00:50:35.240
like saying, you know, you know, satanic cultists are known for their fervor guys, you know, just
00:50:40.800
because something increases the fervor of a community or the level of excitement of a community or the
00:50:45.960
level of dedication of a community to, to those things, you know, fancy art, et cetera. That doesn't mean
00:50:52.140
that that is leading them towards God or righteousness.
00:50:59.620
But I don't know how you feel like comfort was this from a secular and theological perspective.
00:51:05.920
No, no. I mean, what, I mean, you can see this also in secular conditions too, where people say
00:51:11.940
all sorts of obscure things, um, and, and signal with all sorts of seemingly off signals in an attempt
00:51:19.400
to gain a higher position in the status hierarchy or to just feel like they're learning something
00:51:26.920
in a way that doesn't actually make a difference in the pursuit, whatever it may be. So it makes
00:51:33.120
sense on a secular level as well as a religious one. I like it.
00:51:35.880
And I should also point out here, just in case it's ever a test become a system and people then
00:51:39.120
like try to signal status with extreme modesty, like walk around wearing rags or something like
00:51:45.120
that, that is also sinful because now you are using an extreme form of modesty as a status signal
00:51:50.780
within your community. Instead, you should always dress and act in a way that provides you with the
00:51:55.980
most utility. So if you need to wear a certain amount of jewelry to be accepted within certain
00:52:00.160
business circles, then you do that. If you need to dress in a suit to, you know, impress and affirm
00:52:06.040
other people, then you do that. You know, you are always dressing in a way that is optimal
00:52:10.800
for the achievement of the goals that God has given you, which are often seen in your industry
00:52:21.520
Yeah. I think a lot of it, what I'm just hearing you say is like, well, people just need to be more
00:52:33.600
Well, I love you to death, Simone. You are great. And I appreciate you going through it because
00:52:39.480
I mean, you would never, I think, really probably even thought about idolatry or what it may mean
00:52:44.800
No, why would I? In the culture I grew up in. Yeah, no way.