Idol Speculation
Did the pagans really worship idols? If so, what was going on?
To be precise, they did not worship idols as such, but they worshipped the gods who they believed the idols represented.
But it was more than that. They also believed that the idols became the channels for the invisible god. If you like the spirit of the god can in and through the idol.
This is why certain idols were venerated as sacred–because they were such effective transmitters or carriers of the spirit of the god.
In reading the Old Testament reading from Isaiah today it struck me. The pagan idol worship itself was a pointer to the incarnation of the Lord.
The prophet writes,And so I revealed things beforehand,before they happened I announced them to you,so that you could not say, ‘My idol was the one that performed them,it was my carved image, my image of cast metal, that decreed them.’You have heard and seen all this,will you not admit it?Now I am revealing new things to you,things hidden and unknown to you,created just now, this very moment,The old order of idols is overturned and something new–hidden from the foundation of the world is revealed.
Everything in the old religions were poetic pointers to the truth. Then we saw partially. We saw in hints and guesses. In Christ all is unlocked and fulfilled.
The old idols were a crude idea of incarnation one day. The gods inhabited statues of wood and stone–or so people imagined. Not only that, many aspects of pagan religion were calculated to enable human beings to be infested by the pagan spirits. Shamans and devotees would get themselves into a trance state, alter their consciousness with drugs and repetitious dancing or chanting and so open themselves to the alien spirits bringing about a kind of incarnation–in which the demon spirits took flesh.
They were crude and often horrible intimations of what was to come, but they were pointers nonetheless.
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