Idolatry, as the refusal of newness, is all around us, so much so that we no longer even need to worry about raising up graven images.
The Roots of Awe and the Rise of Idolatry
Mark 4:41 offers one of the most difficult translation moments of the New Testament, due in no small part to the tricky emotion that is in play here. The verse comes at the tail end of the story in which Jesus is fast asleep in the boat with his disciples, only to have a storm sweep over them. The winds and the waves threaten the boat, and Jesus sleeps through it until wakened by the disciples.
Jesus issues the famous “Peace! Be still!”, at which point, order returns, and the text then reads:
And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (ESV, parallels in the KJV, NIV, etc.)
Or is it:
Overcome with awe, they said to each other, “Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him!” (CEB, parallel in Amplified Bible, NRSV, New American, Living Bible, etc.)
These two sensations—fear and reverence—are long-observed to travel together1: that which inspires us and evokes wonder is also that which puts us far out over our borders. To be in the presence of one who can command the weather is to be amazed and terrified that such a thing exists in the world. Because such a thing should not be in a world of cause and effects.
Consider how, in many horror films, the monster evokes a sense of reverence and horror at the same time: Dracula—the seductive demon; Frankenstein—the terrible wonder; Cthulu—the old god rising from the darkness who causes those who view him to go mad.
Even if we take the appearance of such a thing to be benevolent, we avert our eyes, for it’s hard to know what it might mean to emulate such a thing. It’s one thing to appreciate and revere that such a thing exists, but another thing to presume that it could be a repeatable or containable phenomenon. Dacher Keltner observes that in a study involving tens of thousands of participants across the globe, that this dual feeling—this feeling named awe—was most frequently associated not with feelings of nature, but with moral excellence: viewing someone do an action which breaks out of the ordinary cycles of malaise, indifference or decency, and evokes something truly amazing.
Of course, such feelings of awe rarely become mass movements, Keltner observes. They stay rare for the precise reason that most people come into contact with them, and, like the crowds of the gospels, are amazed and then go eat lunch, or are amazed and then try to kill the thing breaking open the world.
Connecting these reactions of fear and amazement together creates a contradiction in our minds: we are entranced by it, but are also repelled by it, for it doesn’t fit anywhere in particular. Jesus, in calming weather patterns, traverses the human-nature boundary, or by another interpretation2, the human-demonic boundary, and all while half-asleep.
But such is the difference between awe and idolatry: that which is new and beckons, and that which is manageable and makes no claims.
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In idolatry, we find, I think, a refusal of this duality, or at least, a refusal to live with it. In this way, idolatry is closest to sloth: it is a refusal not just to keep up with God, but to keep up with a God who is new, as opposed to predictable.
But—instead of what we do with the benevolent monster—we do not banish the source of awe; we simply try to make it fit on one side of the ledger: material or purely ethereal, the liberating God who found us in Egypt or the God capable of traveling with us through the desert. If the first move of idolatry is that we refuse to keep going with this God, the second move is like it: the refusal to keep going with this God, the refusal of a god who scrambles our existing world. We’re just too tired from the wilderness, and need something more predictable.
No Need for Idols in the Algorithmic World
Frequently, idolatry is described in conjunction with the second commandment, the prohibition of graven images3. It is with this in mind that John Calvin famously wrote that:
“[M]an’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols… man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God4.”
Calvin here is assuming that idolatry goes hand in hand with graven images, that to have an idol is to produce something manageable which is other than God, the unmanageable. But what I want to suggest is that our age no longer needs to erect something to take the place of the unmanageable God: our minds have become increasingly unaware that even the things we call new are just varieties of the same thing.
One of the most illuminating aspects of listening to
talk about the recent Apple event was how the once path-breaking Apple has become stultified in its innovation: nothing new, just a better camera5. I take this to be an iteration of how this works: that once entranced by something with familiar beats and similar features, it’s hard to get people out of that rut, either because of market dominance, or morally, because we’re just slothful people.So, here’s my thesis on modern idolatry:
We no longer need visualized idols because we are losing the capacity for our minds to go that far to begin with.
What I mean by this is that, unlike Calvin, we live in the age of the algorithm, with our existence online presents us with variations on a theme: one comedian video leads to seven more, each varied enough to not be identical. The non-identical repetition keeps us interested, but within the ballpark of a common theme. The irruption of something totally new would break the spell of the doomscroll, or at least disrupt the ability of the algorithm to offer predictable content.
In other words, in an algorithim, true awe—the jumpstart awake into a new world in which God is— doesn’t stand a chance here by definition.
Something which would compel us to act in a different way because it pushes us out of our frame, doesn’t fit within an algorithmic function, not only because algorithims work on offering us more of the same, but also because unless the whole thing breaks, you’re not going to see something entirely new, much less something that breaks the frame. Stuck in a series of variations on the same thing, we are led more easily toward those things which trade on predictable patterns—without these patterns which match the thing you want, you’ll quit watching.
But awe is, like the disciples, that which troubles the water: it draws us in, and pushes us over the edge of what we knew to be good, true, or beautiful. It forces us to pay attention, to question what you’ve been doing in all of these boats all your life. It stands at the edge of amazement and terror, and asks you to have your world broken open.
Idolatry no longer needs to create new graven images because our minds no longer need them: we’re satisfied with iterations of the same thing as before, and something as disorienting as awe, as a God who parts waters and sends locusts, who calls forth a new body comprised of Jew and Gentile, is too unpredictable and tiring.
The term mysterium tremendum is used by Rudolf Otto is his landmark The Idea of the Holy to capture this duality of experience: to enter into the presence of that which is truly other is to be captivated by it and terrified by the breach of limits which it represents.
The sea is the place of the dead frequently in Scripture. Consider how, in Revelation, the seas “give up their dead”, or in Genesis, how the untamable deep is brought into order by God’s speech. All of the journeys of Paul across seas take on new resonances when we consider the cosmic dimensions of crossing over vast bodies of water, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
There are good reasons for treating “don’t have graven images” and “no idols” as part of the same commandment. I’ll be treating them separately, in part because doing so opens up some different conceptual space.
Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.11.8
I’ve been reading The Dark Forest, the sequel to The Three Body Problem, and much of the early plot turns on this point. No spoilers. It’s great.