This morning I was reading Psalm 135, and in the last third of the psalm this motif shows up that I’ve noticed shows up all over the Scripture – it’s this “you become like what you worship” thing. In the psalm it goes like this: 

The idols of the nations are silver and gold, 

Made by human hands. 

They have mouths but cannot speak, 

Eyes, but cannot see. 

They have ears, but cannot hear, 

Nor is there breath in their mouths. 

Those who make them will become like them, 

And so will all who trust in them. 

Sounds familiar, right? This idea is all over the place in the Bible. I don’t have room here to point to the other instances, but maybe one of the first things that pops into your mind is what Jesus had a habit of saying at the end of most every parable and sermon he gave, I’ll paraphrase: “Have you got ears, then listen carefully; have you got eyes? Then look closely.”  

In the West, at least where I grew up, we usually thought of idols in abstract terms. For instance, popularity or career may become an idol. In many places around the world though, the more concrete idolatry persists. Someone literally makes a little cast metal or plastic figurine that is placed in a certain room on a shelf where incense is burned to it and offerings and prayers are made. This is very common around the world to this day.  

It might be worth outlining quickly how idolatry works, and I’ll start by mentioning something that, even though I’d grown up in church, I had never noticed till I was in my twenties when it was pointed out to me. That is, the difference between the first two of the ten commandments. The first commandment is “No other gods”, and the second one is “No idols.” Isn’t that fascinating? Why in the world are “No idols” and “no other gods” two separate commandments? Doesn’t that seem redundant? But it’s not. 

I think that, yes, every idol is a false god, but not every false god is necessarily a tool used for the practice of idolatry. Here’s what I mean – Idolatry is a specific practice. In the ancient near east, idolatry was based on the belief that the gods were not good or reliable, and the only way to get them to do the right thing (or whatever you wanted them to do) was to either bribe them with offerings or twist their arm with magical procedures by which you might bind them to your will. Idolatry, then, is a particular set of practices all based around the premise that a human can exercise power over the gods. In other words, it’s a system of god-manipulation.  

Idolatry gets its own prohibitive commandment because God is saying two things: 1) I’m the real God; you can’t bribe, bind, or manipulate me. Don’t even bother trying. 2) You don’t need to, because I’m good and trustworthy already. I have your best interests in mind even more than you do. 

Idolatry is a source of deep anxiety, because it’s based on trying to get help in an uncertain world from gods who are unreliable and who don’t really love you anyway. Can you imagine what a relief that second commandment was to those people worn out by the anxiety of idolatry? 

That all seems far away, ancient history, right? But it really hit home for me, when I realized I was using the phrase “In Jesus’s Name” at the end of my prayers as a magical procedure. That old pattern of distrust that gives rise to idolatry was still alive just below my awareness, and I felt like if I said that phrase God had to hear and respond to my prayers accordingly – I’d fulfilled the procedural requirements. This kind of thing is still popular today in “name it and claim it” and “word of faith” movements, where it’s taught that enough faith and the right words can create reality or get God to do this or that. It’s the same old idolatry dressed up in new clothes, even clothes that look, at first, to be Christian clothes. 

It may seem silly, but saying, “In Jesus’s Name” at the end of a prayer doesn’t bribe or bind the real God at all. We have zero leverage, no bargaining chips with God, we depend entirely on what Paul calls in Ephesians “God’s good pleasure” to save us. The only reason God listens, cares for, and saves us is because he wants to. He’s simply good and loves us, and we can trust him.  

So, Jesus shows up in the flesh. He has eyes that see, ears that hear, and a mouth full of breath and words of life. And he is realistic about the situation he’s entered into; he knows many of the people he will speak to have already been worshiping blind, deaf, and mute idols for so long that they’ve become blind and deaf to reality themselves with mouths that say “more and more about less and less.”  When he teaches he tugs on this thread of an idea that is woven all through Scripture, this anti-idolatry motif, when he says, “If you have ears, listen; if you have eyes, look closely.” He’s inviting them to worship him, to “ascribe to the Lord the greatness due his name.” If they will do this, they will be healed and become like him. They too, like Jesus and in him, will have eyes that see, ears that hear. Because you become like what you worship. 

In Psalm 135, what immediately follows the previous quote is the psalmist begging Israel, the house of Aaron, the Levites, everyone who fears him to praise the LORD. And that name LORD is in all-caps, which means it’s the specific, particularizing name of God. The psalmist goes from how idol worshipers will take on the likeness of the man-made blind and deaf idols they call upon, to pointing at one particular God by name who has differentiated himself as the only one capable of bringing dehumanized humans back into full vitality. 

Jesus identifies himself as that specific, particularized deity come in the flesh. He is the Image of the invisible God, that God – the only Maker of heaven and earth, the God of Moses, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He’s the uncreated Son of the Father, who gave Moses the second commandment against idolatry. The whole destiny of humanity is summarized in Jesus. The reality is that Jesus invented humanity to be custom fitted for himself at the Incarnation, to unite us to himself, and to draw us up into the Life of the Trinity. Paul says in Ephesians that, since Jesus has come, the great mystery has been made known to us – that is, the true destiny of humankind, the destination God had in mind before he created anything – it’s has been revealed. That is, to be with and like Jesus, the true human. 

We make idols that are less than us and we become lessened to their likeness, but God created images like himself, which he fulfills at the incarnation and goes on to raise them to his likeness. Or as Lewis put it, “The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.”

To fix our eyes on him gives us back the eyes we had lost. To listen to him gives us ears again. To worship anything or anyone other than Jesus, dehumanizes us. To worship Jesus makes us like him, fully alive and fully human.

Lord, Grant us eyes to see and ears to hear

by Christina Rossetti

Lord, grant us eyes to see and ears to hear,

And souls to love and minds to understand,

And steadfast faces toward the Holy Land,

And confidence of hope, and filial fear,

And citizenship where Thy saints appear

Before Thee heart in heart and hand in hand,

And Alleluias where their chanting band

As waters and as thunders fill the sphere.

Lord, grant us what Thou wilt, and what Thou wilt

Deny, and fold us in Thy peaceful fold:

Not as the world gives, give to us Thine own:

Inbuild us where Jerusalem is built

With walls of jasper and with streets of gold,

And Thou Thyself, Lord Christ, for Corner Stone.