Torah Truth

This part will start from explaining the nature of Faith, a backbone of religiosity, as a prerequisite to understanding of the phenomenon of idol worship.

What is Faith ? For a start let see the dictionary definition:

• confidence or trust in a person or thing
• belief that is not based on proof
• belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion

Religious person has a faith in God and in a particular religious philosophy and Scriptures. Then, there are spiritual practices even today which follow very similar practices to idol worship described in Torah. And, after all, there are so called atheists who claim that they don’t have any faith but live only by what they know from experience. But is it so?

When such atheist gets sick and is told by his doctor that he needs a surgery, he makes himself available without reservation to do whatever doctor tells him to do even if this involves cut open his chest, cut open his heart or lungs or brain … with a full Faith in ability of the Doctor to a such degree, that may be seen as a form of madness or even a form of human self sacrifice to the individual living 3000 years ago. Such Faith may be considered as completely blind as a patient even required to sign paper which warns him that a surgery might fail… and he must agree to it in writing … but his Faith in doctor stays unhindered no matter what! What is it if not a strong belief, a fanatical Faith in medical “magic” no matter how many failures there could be in the past …

It is a well known fact that majority of population of any country gets their outlook on politics or ideology from the dominant mass media. This is another form of the inherent Faith in those who edit the new media reports. From the Russian Bolsheviks to the Nazi Germany and Chinese Mao regime, all the dictatorial powers managed very successfully the mind of their population, by means of mass media, transforming a whole country into their supporters and executioners of their plans. They made their country citizens to have a Faith in their ideology … regardless how many of their own citizens where driven to the concentration camps .. the rest of the country, not yet imprisoned, still had a Faith in their leader …

All of the above should point to the fact that any human lives by Faith! Without a Faith, a strong belief in some individuals and ideas coming from them, life of human being is impossible. Each and everyone is influenced by others meaning that our own ideas and principles are nothing else but those adopted from our immediate environment, from education, from media, from culture we live in. In other words everybody lives by Faith in somebody or in something (“something” in turn comes from somebody too).

Who and what do you have Faith in? Do you believe in powerful personalities? political leaders? celebrities? religious leaders? Do you believe doctors? (Probably vast majority do, making this Faith into a mainstream).

This brings us to a point: the choice we humans have is not whether to have a Faith or not but to how we choose / adopt our set of Faiths, whether we control this process of the formation of “my Faith” or we are carried by the wind of circumstances from our childhood through the adult life, and incidentally and uncontrollably we get our Faith (or we can say , our Religion). Later in life this set of Faiths will drive our life in one way or another.

In each moment of the human history there were always a number of the competing Faiths ruling the world.

Below are listed the most prevalent Faiths in our times, provided in the level of degree from the most “blind” or “undemanding” of any proofs, to the most demanding proofs or logical explanation :

1. a strong Faith in medical science and doctors
2. a set of particular political views and strong belief in corresponding political leaders who represent those views
3. Faith in Shamanistic or other types of pagan traditions, in “black magic”, astrology, Tarot cards, etc.
4. Religious politheism
5. Religious monotheism

Note: explanations on the criteria chosen to determine the levels assigned to each particular Faith is beyond this discussion here. We will only provide a hint as follows: observe that it is normal today that no one doctor will try to convince his patient why he, the doctor, must be trusted to do a dangerous surgery with a complete Faith. Why? Because this is a well established form of Faith. This is why patient came to the doctor in the first place. He might had a good recommendation from somebody (and most do) but he did not try to find out how many failures occurred in the past as to discover such information would be from hard to impossible.   On another hand, much time dedicated by religions, even those established thousands years ago (especially monotheistic), to the proving and supporting the Faith, such as promoting the scientific view of creationism, sharing the spiritual experiences, comparing the Scriptures to the latest news, etc. No matter how old the religion is, it always needs to compete for the minds of people.

Here is another list, quite shorter, of the competing Faiths prevalent 3,000 years ago:

1. Faith in a particular deity (idol such as Baal)
2. Faith in King
3. Faith in a new religion, One God (Israel)

First Faith is well established through thousands of years, second is obvious, the third is just presented in the time of the story of Torah.

God instructs Israel through His servant Moses to properly choose the Faith: Belief in Him must override all other Faiths competing, in fact dominating, nations in those times. Those, the other competing Faiths existing in those times, have been described in Torah as the ones to be fought and destroyed by Israel.

Thus, it is a task for our intellect today, to apply this same principle to fight all other Faiths dominant today in favor of One God of Israel.

Idol Worship Navigation:

• Idol Worship Part 1 – Outline
• Idol Worship Part 2 – Understanding Nature of Faith
• Idol Worship Part 3 – Faith Based On Evidences Versus Baseless
• Idol Worship Part 4 – Elections in USA