“You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments." Exodus 20:4-5 While this commandment may hold significance in Judaism, it seems less applicable and perhaps even unreasonable in the context of Christianity. Human beings evolve from childhood to adulthood, and many never fully mature. Throughout much of our lives, we are prone to believing in various ideas, whether true or not. Even those who accept a flawed, jealous perception of God will naturally contemplate other aspects of the divine nature of the reality we inhabit. It is unreasonable to confine anyone to the narrow depiction of divinity presented in the Old Testament. This is why Jesus Christ, and the New Testament were introduced by first-century Rome, incorporating the more nuanced and reasonable Greek and Roman philosophies of that time. All religion has been shaped by political forces, crafted by the empires that ruled over the land. The Old Testament reflects the influence of various masters of Canaan, from the Egyptians and Persians to the Greeks, and finally, Rome in the first century, which transformed the text into Christianity. This is not to say that the Bible lacks divine inspiration, but rather that the powers of the time shaped its texts to serve their political needs. For the Egyptians, it was Moses and the Promised Land, creating loyal defenders of Canaan at Egypt's frontier. For the Persians, it was Ezra and a temple to administer Egypt. For the Greeks, it was Alexander the Messiah, and a buffer state between the struggles of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic rulers. But for the Romans, who needed to govern the entire known world, a universal or "Catholic" religion was necessary, so the logical solution was a blend of all the religions and philosophies of the land. This is why the Catholic Church today is filled with idols, like Mother Mary who embodies the ancient goddesses like Isis, Ishtar, or Venus; candles evoke the fire of Zoroastrianism; saints and popes mirror the deification of great men in Greek and Roman traditions. However, to Greek Platonists, who gave us the concept of the Trinity, and to the Stoics and Cynics, idols would have been absurd. The new Christian faith, with its Unknowable God, would reject such practices as contrary to its very essence. "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." — Ecclesiastes 1:9 Though we live in a more modern world than the one the Apostle Paul knew, we remain humans who enter this world knowing nothing. What we were will be again, we repeat the experience from child into adult billions of times year after year, there is nothing new about us. We create our idols, and only God knows the many ridiculous acts we will perform. But all is forgiven, our God is Unknowable, and Jesus Christ, the Logos has forgiven our sins. For the Platonists, Christ is the Logos, and the Logos is intelligence. God hopes you are intelligent, for intelligence is the only way to approach God. To be one with Christ is to be one with the Logos. The path to Christ is not paved with foolishness but requires education, dedication, and honesty. God is not afraid of your imagined gods or jealous of them. God is good and would never "punish children for the iniquity of parents." To know God, we must strive to understand the meaning of "good." This is not an easy task, for to know what is good is to know what God is—an endeavor that is approachable but never fully attainable. Perhaps "good" and "God" are so similar because God added an "o" to highlight their connection. 411