Some of you wanted to continue tonight's conversation, so here's your opportunity.
The ideas we discussed tonight were (corrections are welcome as are reminders of what I've left out):
1) Idolatry is dependence on something or someone else as your intermediary with God ("shirq")
2) The rules we create to accomplish some goal can often themselves overwhelm the goal itself, becoming idols.
3) To what extent do cultural accretions impose idolatry on what was originally non-idolatrous practice?
4) Is idolatry the result of the human desire for distraction (resistance to the difficult spiritual/mindfulness work) or the result of our need for control?
5) God can become an idol when our understanding of God simply becomes an extension of ourselves, when we remake God in our own image.
6) When institutional religion becomes more important than the personal and social transformation it seeks to achieve, religion itself can become an idol.
7) Science is by nature both iconoclastic in that it progresses by tearing down its own idols and remains idolatrous in that it often recognizes only one form of knowledge -- empiricism.
8) When the means we adopt to accomplish our goals becomes ends in and of themselves, we are transforming them into idols.
9) The risk of idolatry rises when we see ourselves as somehow separate from God rather than somehow an extension of God.
The ideas we discussed tonight were (corrections are welcome as are reminders of what I've left out):
1) Idolatry is dependence on something or someone else as your intermediary with God ("shirq")
2) The rules we create to accomplish some goal can often themselves overwhelm the goal itself, becoming idols.
3) To what extent do cultural accretions impose idolatry on what was originally non-idolatrous practice?
4) Is idolatry the result of the human desire for distraction (resistance to the difficult spiritual/mindfulness work) or the result of our need for control?
5) God can become an idol when our understanding of God simply becomes an extension of ourselves, when we remake God in our own image.
6) When institutional religion becomes more important than the personal and social transformation it seeks to achieve, religion itself can become an idol.
7) Science is by nature both iconoclastic in that it progresses by tearing down its own idols and remains idolatrous in that it often recognizes only one form of knowledge -- empiricism.
8) When the means we adopt to accomplish our goals becomes ends in and of themselves, we are transforming them into idols.
9) The risk of idolatry rises when we see ourselves as somehow separate from God rather than somehow an extension of God.