Exodus 20:4
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven
image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the
earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
Who is like unto God?
“The Fear of the Lord is
the beginning of wisdom,” we are told in the Hebrew Testament of Scripture. And St. Paul tells us that this Fear of the
Lord is a gift of the Holy Spirit. But
is it right to fear God? For God is
love, so why would anyone fear an all loving deity? This fear, however, is not the kind where we
walk around covering our heads, fearing that the Lord will smite us if we even
think an unkind thought. It is, however,
awful in that we are filled with awe when thinking of God, when fully aware of
who God is and who we are.
Before any human being,
before any tree, reptile, or bit of living slime came into existence, GOD IS. The Unmoved Mover, the Uncaused Cause, the
Uncreated Creator, Who is “the ultimate reality that everyone calls God.”[1]
[emphasis added.] And we are not
God. We exist only because God loves us
and chooses to bring us into being – loves us so much, that He creates us in
His divine image with spiritual souls, intelligence, imagination, and free
will. Though we are given this great
privilege, we are nothing without God and completely dependent upon God, Who is
the infinite, eternal Creator and Master of the universe. To know this, then, to know our place in the
universe relative to the Infinite/Eternal One, is to truly have a Fear of the
Lord – filled with tremulous awe, down-on-your-knees wonder and adoration – the
only way in which we can begin to have true wisdom.
There is, of course, no
earthly image that can fully depict the limitlessness of God. There are no words that we can use to
precisely and completely describe who God is with all of God’s attributes. The One that we call God is infinite and
cannot fit into the workings of our earthly brains, tongues, ears, eyes, or
fingers. If we truly had a Fear of the
Lord, then, perhaps, we could appreciate this truth and live our lives
accordingly. But, we are creatures of
the earth and we are comfortable with earthly things. We understand strength when we see an ox pull
ten times its weight. We understand
gentleness when we feel a tender caress on our cheeks. We understand “good” in the sweetness of ripe
fruits and the beauty of healthy flowers and flesh, as we understand “bad” in
the bitterness of poison and the ugliness of a body beaten to death. And we seek to understand God in these
earthly ways. But, no thing is like God.
When we want to fulfill
the divine image in which we have been created, when we want to do godly
things, it is wrong to seek the strength of mighty beasts or the beauty of
exotic blossoms. It is in finding the
beauty and strength within us, spiritually, the health and goodness of our
souls, that we come nearer to God. Spirit
and truth. This does not satisfy the
hunger of our eyes, ears and other organs for a material focus for the whole of
our worshiping selves. Too often, however,
we labor for that which is not food, that which cannot satisfy our whole selves
because it is merely material, merely earthly, and not the fullness of
Creation. No creature is better than the
Creator – the First comes first, always and everywhere, or everything is out of
order.
Christina Chase
[1] St.
Thomas Aquinas
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