-or-
WHEN THE SCAM PAYS TOO WELL TO QUIT
This is a tale of two delusions and deceptions-and it is a tale of today. Pay attention
In the book of Daniel there is an account of the prophet Daniel who lived during the
Babylonian exile during the reign of the Persian King Cyrus about 500 years before the birth of Christ (in 550 bc)-around 2,500 years ago. At the time the Persians
had some loopy alleged “Gods”- one of which was called “Bel.” Bel was a supposed God that was completely man made- just a huge gigantic statue made of wood and bronzed on the outside sitting on an altar of sorts in a Temple of sorts .
People actually worshipped this “God” Bel. They paid tribute to it. They had liturgical ceremonies around it (maybe an entire liturgy committee and a temple council), they prayed to it and they believed it had power and was alive. Not less than seventy (70) priests serviced the temple of Bel.
Every week it was “fed” by a deposit of a huge amount of sacrifices of food – six barrels of fine flour, forty sheep and six “measures” (large jugs no doubt) of wine.
This just cracked Daniel up. It made him laugh. Hysterical. Ridiculous. So utterly stupid. Are these people crazy? An entire empire off its collective gord.
Well, if you are a devotee of Bell, you are going to be extremely outraged by this insolence, as apparently the townsfolk were as they were up in arms at Daniel’s sacrilege to Bel.
So King Cyrus, who was actually rather fond of Daniel, and a fair minded man, decided to get to the bottom of it. The King decides that he is going to lock the doors to the Temple, with the food inside and cleverly lays ashes around the altar on the floor. He put the seal of his ring on the lock outside so he will be able to tell if someone picked the lock or otherwise opened the door. Then lets see….
If Bel is really a God and really eating all this stuff he is alive and a true God and Daniel will be put to death, if there is some foul play and something else is happening to the food, Daniel will live. Bring it on- says Daniel.
The next morning Daniel and the King open the doors and see all the food is missing.
Oh no. Looks like Bel is really eating this massive quantity of food- he must be alive!.He must be a true god! But wait- look closer- remember the ashes on the floor? Look at all the footsteps of people-and kids footsteps even! Turns out that the 70 priests and their wives and children made a weekly feast of Bel’s “sacrifices” by sneaking into an underground tunnel and trap door by the altar .What a scam!! How ridiculous. What a joke. The entire kingdom was hoodwinked by the
Crooked pagan priests who snuck up from the basement- so King Cyrus put them all to death. Daniel lives another day.
Fast forward five hundred fifty years or so.
Another delusion which hoodwinked an entire kingdom that found it too profitable to
Give up is found in Ephesus, now part of Turkey, then a thriving port town. When Paul of Tarsus went to Ephesus
he found a Temple there twice the size of the Greek Parthenon in Athens devoted to the Greek Fertility Warrier Princess God Artemis (called “Diana” elsewhere.) This Artemis was widely worshipped in the Greek world and Ephesus was a pilgrimage site because it is where the Temple –like a huge Basilica -housed an image of Artemis believed to have fallen out of the sky. Artemis was so famous that
The silversmiths who were carving replicas of the shrine of Artemis created an industry of it and sold them all over the world. If you think “Lourdes” is czhatchki heaven for every kind of religious bobble-headed trinket, it is dwarfed in comparison to the silversmiths of Artemis whose idols were sent from the port town in ships all over the known world.
Trades in idolatrous images of Artemis and the Shrine of Artemis we read about in Acts 19 were so lucrative that the very presence of Paul threatened them. There was a financial motive in protecting the delusion that Artemis was a great God.
It fed practically the entire town of Ephesus. When the little band of Jewish upstarts led by Paul came to town the town became so threatened that it gathered and for two solid hours tried to shout them down and out with loud cries of “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”
It was not as easy for Paul to crack the deceptions of the worship of the false God Artemis as it was for Daniel to reveal the absurdity of the false God Bel worship in one night. Paul nevertheless stayed for two years, rented a hall in a theatre of sorts and determinedly taught in the hall every day for two solid years in Ephesus. He nearly caused a riot of the silversmiths and idol makers that threatened to bring the wrath of the Roman army down on the town. They were threatened with their very livelihoods. How were they going to feed themselves and their children if this is all a crock? Who will buy this crap then?. They created an industry out of a false worship. Paul was literally run out of town and high tailed it for Macedonia.
Thereafter, we know that Paul remembered the town lovingly even after he was sent to prison as he penned there his great letter to the “Ephesians” correcting their theological error; some bad habits die hard and Paul knew they didn’t completely get it. He tells them this: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with The Word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So also husbands, should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes It, even as Christ does the church because we are members of his body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery…” So also, indeed.
God did not give up on Ephesus- the principle place of pilgrimage to all Artemis worshippers at the Basilica of Artemis- he sent Paul there to tell them this is a crock people. This is not a true God, this Artemis is not the Way, the Life and the Truth as is the One True God.
What do we know about false beliefs from the tales of Bel and Artemis? We know
Entire kingdoms were off the ranch in worshipping something completely nonsense because it paid too well to question it. The system worked. The Silversmiths had a good business, the pagan priests of Bel fed their families.
So listen- what have you made for yourself and placed it on the alter of your making to worship when it is really not of the one true God but you worship it as though it were-because it pays too well and works fine? What have you bowed to at the altar of your own making or that was institutionally presented as truth, and affirmed only because it profits you or the institution to a point where you refuse to listen to the truth?
Jesus promises us (and all his promises are sure and true) that Truth will set you free.
Worshipping false idols makes you captive to illusion and deceptions that keep you in bondage to a lie- the greater the profit from the lie the greater the hold that the bondage has on you because it seems self-affirmed by the profit. The more money the silversmiths made the angrier they were at Paul because the more they were threatened.
But Jesus, you see, came to set ALL the captives free. The very point of his coming to Preach is that he came to communicate TRUTH- because Truth sets the captives free from the bondage of their illusions and false worship into LIFE. Jesus didn't come just to Preach- it's WHAT he came to Preach that he came for.
Jesus, the author of all life, came to free you from the oppression of your delusions and to be the exclusive atoning sacrifice for your otherwise inexcusable unacceptable depravity. Jesus, is the greatest emancipator- a gazillion- fold greater than Lincoln. An eternity greater than Lincoln.
Living a lie is painful- and this is not “acceptable sacrifice.” Just because it hurts doesn’t make it noble. Love is greater than sacrifice and Jesus is Love. To insist on keeping yourself in bondage to false idols, false illusions, and false teachings completely denies Jesus himself.
Eventually the truth took hold in Ephesus, and three hundred years or so after Paul left
Ephesus, the great pillars of the Temple of Artemis were carted off to the Magnificent
Haggia Sophia church in Constantinople, the first city where the truth of Jesus was allowed to be worshipped in full in public-where what was known in secret saw the light of day and was acknowledged as true publically.
Bad habits die hard; the more you profit off a lie the more you will believe it true.
The Artemis worshippers who denied Jesus you won’t find in heaven. The seventy Bel priests and their family of worshippers killed by King Cyrus you won’t find in Heaven.
A lie is always just and still a lie and Jesus is the Truth and the Life. The truth will set you free. Jesus promises. Do you believe him- really! Sacrifice into the bondage of illusion is just another word for oppression. Oppression doesn’t create Life, it denies it, and to those watching who live in the light- well, we try not to laugh too loud, because it just looks too ridiculous. Do you REALLY believe JESUS of NAZARETH, or are you feeding too well
off bowing to the big lie.
No comments:
Post a Comment