IDOL OR IMAGE? A Look At The Second Commandment

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in 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, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

-Exodus 20:4-6, ESV

Throughout the Old Testament and in the New Testament we are commanded and warned through narratives not to worship idols.  But what is an idol?  Put simply, an idol is anything or anyone that competes with God for our affection and desire.  Certainly the figure of Ganesh (the Hindu god with the elephant head) that sat on my college friend’s desk was an idol, but as we saw recentlyMary and the saints can also become idols.  Heart idols have been emphasized throughout Church history—and with good reason.  Idolatry like all sin starts in the heart when we love anything more than God.  But there is another form of idolatry that is rampant in the Church today: visible images of God.  Our God is jealous for His own glory and our ultimate good, so He can suffer no image attempting to depict Him—even honest attempts. This is important to remember, especially as Holy Week approaches, and with it the temptation depict Jesus visually.

Depictions Are Idols

False gods and heart idols clearly violate the Second Commandment, but so do all depictions of God that do not precisely align with Scripture.  Thus the Second Commandment prohibits us from creating ANY image of the Triune God.  The golden calf was a genuine attempt to depict God, but that did not make it any less of an idol than Baal, Molech, or Dagon.  And since the Ten Commandments are just as binding today as they were for Israel, we must be careful to avoid setting up any golden calves of our own.  The harmless and effeminate cultural caricature of God referred to by a litany of deviant pronouns and affirmed by the “Sparkle Creed” is a golden calf.  The benevolent cosmic vending machine of the prosperity gospel that can be manipulated by those who “name it and claim it” is a golden calf.  The god who ignores or celebrates sin is a golden calf, but so is the god that elevates the teachings of man to the level of Scripture.  The god who is the embodiment of any political or societal ideology is a golden calf.  And the god whose chosen people belong to a particular ethnicity or nationality is a golden calf.  Despite their genuineness, the golden calf was so abhorrent to God that He said this to Moses: “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you” (Exodus 32:9-10).  What was so abhorrent about this genuine attempt at worship?  Listen to how the psalmist describes it:

They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt, wondrous works in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. Therefore he said he would destroy them—had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them.

-Psalms 106:20-23, ESV

As we saw here, God did not change His mind by stating that He would destroy Israel but then relenting.  God only ever does what He always intended to do, so He never intended to follow through with destroying Israel.  Instead, He decried destruction in large part so that Moses would foreshadow Jesus by interceding to God on His people’s behalf.  He is also showing that all who engage in idolatry in any form deserve condemnation and destruction because idolatry exchanges the glory of God for an image:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

-Romans 1:21-25, ESV

Any visible depiction of God trades His glory for a cheap imitation that ultimately dishonors Him.  Those images always resemble people and thereby belittle their Creator.  They lead people to worship the god of man’s imagination rather than God as He reveals Himself in Scripture.  No matter how genuine we are in creating these images or how careful we are to ensure their accuracy with Scripture, they exchange the truth about God for a lie.  God has revealed Himself to us in Scripture with words not images.  The only visible image of God is Jesus Christ, but Scripture lacks any physical description of Him.  God in His sovereignty ordained that Jesus would come long before the advent of photography and would not be in the proximity of skillful artists who could create an accurate image of Him.  That means that God did not intend for us to have any images of Jesus.  Nevertheless, such images are everywhere, from crucifixes and stained-glass windows to paintings, stage and screen renditions, and even memes. 

Such depictions—even honest attempts to be as accurate as possible—are idolatrous because of what they say about God.  A picture is worth a thousand words, so every picture depicting God is speaking volumes about God.  Unless it aligns completely with what the whole of Scripture teaches about God, that depiction is false.  It is impossible to depict all of the attributes of God in a comprehensive and balanced way in a single image, so every such image is lying about Him.  From Michelangelo’s painting of Adam and God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to Morgan Freeman’s rendition in the 2003 film Bruce Almighty, God the Father has often been depicted as the wise (and often harmless) old grandpa.  This leads people to completely ignore His other attributes, leading people to worship a false god.  Jesus has similarly been depicted in numerous ways throughout the centuries.  The modern Western version is an effeminate Scandinavian with long, flowing hair that is immediately recognizable even by unbelievers.  This causes people to neglect many attributes of Jesus such that their version of Jesus bears no resemblance to the real Jesus.  With all of these depictions, the artist is communicating with people that this is what God looks like, and by various thematic elements communicating what God’s attributes are and aren’t.  There is no way that these depictions of God can avoid violating the Second Commandment, so we sin against God when we create these images and when we seek them out.

What About Screen and Stage Portrayals?

There is one form of depiction that does not say “this is God” but nevertheless represents Him visually: an actor’s portrayal on screen or stage.  The fundamental difference is that we understand that the person we are seeing is an actor who is portraying someone else.  In a sense, this makes it theoretically possible for an actor to portray Jesus without violating the Second Commandment, but such a portrayal would at the very least be extremely dangerous.  After all, the actor is saying that he is like the person he is portraying.  Therefore, an actor portraying Jesus is telling the audience that Jesus is like him.  Is it possible for such a portrayal to be accurate enough to avoid violating the Second Commandment?

Arguably the best attempt at this in recent memory was The Passion of the Christ, which depicted the events surrounding Christ’s death as accurately as practical.  Aside from the inclusion of extrabiblical material from Catholic tradition and the need to tone down the violence of the crucifixion, Jim Caviezel’s portrayal of Jesus aligned with Scripture.  Essentially all of his dialog came directly from Scripture and was even spoken in the original languages.  Still, this can cause people to envision Jesus as looking like Jim Caviezel rather than the way a working-class Jewish man of the period would have appeared.  So while I can’t conclude that this violated the Second Commandment, I certainly cannot rule it out.  On the other end of the spectrum is the popular show The Chosen.  I have not seen it—nor do I intend to—but from clips and information I have seen, the show takes excessive artistic license and departs from Scripture in many ways.  For example, a popular line in the series that has become a bit of a motto is Jesus saying “get used to different”.  This appears nowhere in Scripture, and we have no reason to believe that Jesus actually said that.  Such deviations create extreme risk to any Christian of being led astray into false beliefs about Jesus.  Therefore, The Chosen violates the Second Commandment and blasphemes God.  To make it, support it, or even watch it is to dishonor God, so I exhort all Christians to avoid it and anything like it. 

The same can be said of stage depictions.  A popular skit when I was in college was a pantomime of the Gospel set to the song “Everything” by Lifehouse.  It begins with a man depicting Jesus dancing with a woman who then gets drawn away into various sins.  In desperation, she reaches out to Jesus and they both grasp for each other while the world and sin beat her down.  After some time of this, the Jesus character jumps into the fray and takes the beating of the world and sin with arms outstretched in a clear depiction of the cross.  And once Jesus bursts forth, knocking the adversaries to the ground, the dance resumes.  While this is an emotionally appealing depiction of the Gospel, it has several flaws.  Unless we can view the woman as a metaphor for the Church throughout history rather than an individual, this skit communicates that people are basically good rather than depraved.  It also focuses on external sins and temptations, ignoring the centrality of self in the world-flesh-devil triad.  It is easy to see her as a victim of circumstances needing salvation from the external rather than a sinner in need of a Savior from indwelling sin.  Jesus is also shown to be almost powerless: the woman is drawn away without him being able to do anything about it, and he is unable from a distance to save her.  And while he does eventually come to her rescue, this appears to be Plan B—as if Jesus failed to save us from a distance so He had to resort to the Incarnation.  Therefore this skit ignores the infinite power of Jesus and the fact that the cross was the plan from the beginning.  In the end, while this skit appeals to the modern church infatuated with emotionalism, it is a false depiction of Christ and therefore violates the Second Commandment.  All of this means that while it may be theoretically possible for a stage or screen portrayal of Jesus to avoid violating the Second Commandment, human sinfulness and the deceitfulness of the heart make the risk of sin far too great, so all such portrayals should be avoided.  For the same reason, we must be extremely cautious in our verbal and poetic descriptions as well.  God has revealed Himself in His Word, so any description of Him must align completely with His Word or it too is a violation of the Second Commandment.

Does this mean that we cannot create artistic works that accurately depict what we see in Scripture?  Absolutely not!  Ever since Sinai, God has commanded and inspired people to create works of art to His glory.  As long as we create no visible depictions of God, there is no limit to the artwork that can be inspired by Scripture.  The tabernacle and later the Temple were full of artwork depicting an Eden-like scene and cherubim—but no depiction of God Himself.  Various monuments were erected at different times to commemorate God’s provision in specific events.  Even the priestly garments were works of art.  All of these were to aid people in remembering what God had revealed about Himself through His Word.  Therefore, it is appropriate to create works depicting Scripture as long as they do not visually depict God.  Last year, I saw a wonderful rendition of Ruth from New Life Fine Arts.  I have also enjoyed Cliff Graham’s novels about David’s mighty men.  Both are informed by the whole of Scripture, enriched by historical context, and then filled in by human imagination.  This results in creative work that aligns with Scripture.  Christians can and should create movies, shows, plays, music, poetry, and artwork based on Scripture, but Scripture must be the guardrails and not the jumping-off point for all such work. 

Faith Comes Through Hearing Not Seeing

Since it is never appropriate to create a visible depiction of God, one may ask how we are to reach people without a written language.  First, we must always remember that God will never command us to sin, so there is always a way to obey Him without disobeying Him.  He has commanded us to preach the Gospel to all nations, but He has also commanded us to refrain from making any visual depiction of Him.  So if He calls us to preach the Gospel to people who lack a written language, we must do what Adoniram Judson did and Wycliffe does today: create a written language and then translate the Bible into it!  For each language, that will require decades of work by dedicated missionaries completely immersing themselves in the language.  Instead, some want the easy route: a short-term mission trip that shares the Gospel through a wordless play.  But this is not the way God has determined that the Gospel will be spread, so it is doomed because it is based on a faulty assumption—that seeing is believing.  The Israelites saw all of the wonders that God did in bringing them out of Egypt, but they still rebelled against Him incessantly.  Similarly, for three years the Jews saw all of the miracles that proved Jesus was who He said He was, and yet they still did not believe.  In the context of their unbelief, Paul says this:

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

-Romans 10:12-17, ESV

This is the process that God has ordained to bring about faith.  In order to believe, one must hear the preached Word, meaning that someone else must preach the Word—with words!  One of the most overused quotes in Christian circles is actually a misquote of St. Francis of Assisi: to preach the Gospel through words only when necessary.  While our actions should open the door to the Gospel, we must use our words in order to actually share the Gospel.  No words, no Gospel, because faith comes through hearing not seeing.  And faith comes not from hearing some generic message but “the word of Christ”, so any attempt to present the Gospel that is not Scripture-saturated is no Gospel at all.  In reaching lost people groups without a written language, we must labor over many years to build a linguistic foundation upon which to share the Gospel with them. 

While very few people will be called to do that lifelong work of translation in a foreign land, all parents are called to do that work with their children.  The purpose of monuments throughout Scripture was so that children would ask their parents about them.  This would open a door for the parents to teach their children—with words—about who God is.  So teach children with the words of Bible stories and descriptions straight from Scripture.  Catechisms can also be used very effectively here.  In this way you will build a Gospel foundation for your children so that they will call upon the Name of the Lord and be saved.  So preach the Gospel using the Word of God and not images that violate the Second Commandment.

Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth.

-Deuteronomy 4:15-18, ESV