If this is your first visit, please see my introduction to these Lenten readings.
7 March. Wisdom chapters 13-15
Chapters 13-15 are devoted (no pun intended) to the condemnation of idolatry. Of all the sins found in the Old Testament, this seems to have been considered the worst. The commandments concerning behaviour towards other people – honour parents, but do not steal, kill, commit adultery, bear false witness, or be covetous – were and are routinely broken in both small and large ways, but that does not prevent God from maintaining an active relationship with those who profess to follow him. Such sins can be forgiven, and anyone who believes in God and admits their guilt can be reconciled to him (15:1-2).
Idolatry, though – believing something other than the true God to be in control of the world (or some aspect of it) and worthy of worship – is a different matter. If you believe in a false God, no amount of prayer to him/her/it will either direct you in the way you should go, help you keep to it, or forgive and restore you when you fail. That is why it is the most serious of sins.
The writer makes a sensible distinction, though, between nature-worship and the worship of man-made idols. He can understand (though not excuse) why the people of his or previous generations might worship the sun, stars or animals, for they seem to possess power and (apparent) movement. Even primitive farmers knew the sun and rain were essential for crop growth, so praying to them may have seemed like a good idea. But the writer’s argument here is that if you are intelligent enough to work out the ways nature works, you should be able to deduce that someone has planned it that way, and it is that someone who is more worthy of worship. This is what we would now call “intelligent design” – a step in the right direction towards faith compared with fatalistic atheism or nature-worship.
For the makers and devotees of idols of human making, though, he shows only ridicule. How can someone who has made an image himself from wood or pottery, or bought it in the market, consider it to have any power or influence over him? How can anyone be so foolish as to base their life’s decisions on the “answers” that such “beings” give – perhaps by throwing dice in their presence, or some such practice?
We may well laugh at such behaviour, but are those who put their hope in winning a lottery jackpot any wiser? Or those who trust in horoscopes (which is a form of nature worship as described above)? Or those who have faith in such human constructs as “the economy” or “free trade” or “the Party”?
The conclusion is that “to acknowledge [God] is indeed perfect virtue; to know [God’s] power is the root of all immortality” (15:3). That is the way that the wise king who is supposed to have written this lived his life, and a path to be followed.