Idolatry

The word “idol” in idol singer originates from the religious term “worship.” Idolatry is the worship of a physical object as a god. God is an abstract concept and idol is the form of an image. In the Bible, the Jews, anxious of Moses’ prolonged absence, asked his brother Aaron to make a golden calf in refusing to worship Jehovah, the invisible God also called Yahweh. Humans tend to be more attracted to something visible than invisible. Moses banned idolatry by saying worshiping God as a golden calf is degrading.

Many Korean Protestants tend to consider bowing to the statue of the Buddha and mortuary tablets as idol worship. The Rev. Cho Yong-gi of Yoido Full Gospel Church said of the Japanese earthquake Friday, “The earthquake might be God’s warning against the Japanese people’s idol worship, atheism and materialism.” Kiel Ja-yeon, head of the Christian Council of Korea, told a national breakfast prayer service on March 3, “(The Korean people) fell into the sin of idolatry over the last 5,000 years but God rescued us.”

Christianity has low influence in Japan. Japan accepts a variety of gods as shown in a famous phrase, “Born in a shrine and die in a Buddhist temple.” When a child is born, parents go to a shrine to pray that the child grows up well. The child as a grownup then gets married at a church, and when he or she dies, people go to a temple to pray for the soul. Cho’s comment that the Japanese avoid God and worship idols apparently expresses the religious faith of the Japanese. What is the relationship between the earthquake and idolatry, however? The God of the Bible’s Old Testament can be “a god of wrath,” but the God of the New Testament is “the god of love.” That God created a powerful earthquake and took the lives of so many people goes against the Christian faith.

The apostle Paul lived in an age where many gods and goddesses were found in Greek and Roman mythology. He talked about God transcending image rather than trying to break the images of deities. This was the spirit of his fight versus idolatry. Japan is faced with one of the most devastating disasters in its history. The God of Christians would be displeased with His followers calling the disaster “God’s warning” but instead wants them to share the Japanese people’s agony and pain.

Editorial Writer Song Pyeong-in (pisong@donga.com)