The article first appeared in The Stream, December 13, 2024
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The Jewish and Christian scripture warning against idolatry insists that allowing yourself to be controlled and governed by anything less than an infinitely compassionate and loving Creator is a mistake.
The warning is given to protect us from voluntarily opting to live enslaved.
Idols aren’t limited to little figurines stashed in Rachel’s backpack while Jacob makes his getaway. They are such things as fame, fortune, titles, chauffeurs in Mercedes Benz SUVs, hearing people tell us things like, “Right this way Mr. Jones,” political ambition, and “My son goes to Harvard.” All these things are pleasant enough in their own right, but none as lovely as infinite love and compassion.
The Founders of the United States said it’s “self-evident” that America was founded by this very same Creator who urges us to avoid voluntary enslavement — a Creator who makes us free, equal, and with inalienable rights.
There is a second, vying claim about who and what we are. This is offered by people who reject the fact that humans are God-created. A recent such world philosophy that begat a violent and murderous century was Marxism. Marxism holds that humans are workers and exploiters of workers.
Today’s anti-benevolent-Creator ideologues have moved us beyond being oppressed because we are exploited workers to now being oppressed for a cornucopia of reasons that includes just about everything; being female, homosexual, Pacific Islander, short, mistaken for a male, and all manner of secondary traits worth oppressing. This expansion and glorification of ways to be oppressed is what wealthy tenured profs of color term “intersectionality.”