A treatise on Christian idolatry.
“And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole: and it came to pass, if a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked upon the serpent of brass, he lived. Numbers 21.9.
The context of the above quote includes the people of Israel, in transit between Egypt and the promised land. After giving themselves over to all sorts of murmurings and sexual promiscuity with other peoples, God became angry, and the camp of hundreds of thousands of Hebrews was invaded by poisonous snakes.
This caused a large-scale massacre, and the people sought help from God through Moses – the “trustee” of the desert – and God told Moses to make a bronze serpent, and everyone who looked at this serpent was healed. And as it happened, whoever did so, looking in faith at such an object was healed.
The interesting thing is the phenomenon that exists in our soul, the desire for the sacred, and this desire in search of the sacred, can be transformed into the profane, the sacred and the profane walk side by side, having the only division in faith described in the gospel – believing without seeing.
A few centuries later, the people of Israel, the children of those who were saved by the bronze serpent, who heard the story from their parents, of what had happened and how they were miraculously saved by a serpent made of noble metal and crafted by the hands of craftsmen, but which had been sent by God himself, chose this serpent – the same one – as an object of worship, prostration, intercession, as it says:
“He (King Hezekiah) removed the high places, broke the statues, cut down the groves, and made in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until that day the children of Israel burned incense to it, and they called it Nehushtan (piece of bronze).” 2 Kings 18
This desire to transform objects into sacred things is an old story, as old as humanity itself. The biggest problem is that the Christian faith, which should only be about “faith,” mixes the holy and the profane in the same environment. I say this parallelism happens for the simple fact of confusing the very character of God, and even more serious, not understanding ANYTHING about the scriptures.
It is no wonder that the fact of transforming the serpent into pieces happened during the reign of Hezekiah, who was considered one of the greatest state-religious reforms that occurred in Israel, followed by his son Josiah – And the reform was only possible because they found the book of the Law that had been lost a long time ago.
Therefore, at the very least this text teaches me that even when God orders objects to be built as sacred in the form of symbols, is just a sporadic and palliative act for a people of spiritual ignorance; In other words, God's order to build the ark of the covenant, cherubim, bronze serpents, objects and the like, did not give them the right to transform any form of object as worship and prostration. NEVER. Not even if the object is God himself - Like the golden calf built by the same people and the same desert, they called the golden calf "Elohims", that is, God, still in the plural - trinity. They were not worshiping a "calf" they were worshiping God, but as a representation of an object, and what happened happened - Abomination in the eyes of the Eternal.
When we understand the Word of God as conscience (which is not knowledge), when the word becomes life and not a letter, we abandon the faith of touching the invisible by faith.
God, as a wise man, made the ark of the covenant disappear, because it would certainly be an object of extreme worship for many Christians TODAY.
How they actually transformed geographies, streets, tombs, caves into holy places, where in fact it is just a historical place, because the Saint was the one who stepped there, died and was resurrected.
Christians lack the perception that the primitive, apostolic church did not transform anything into something sacred. For them, dates, births, deaths, places, objects did not exist. (not even the piece of wood from Jesus' own cross - and look, they had access to it), because they knew that there is no holier place than the heart of the one who believes in Jesus in faith, and that holy is everyone who is inhabited by the holy of holies.
I challenge you to live with God having only faith. Understand it simply as a challenge, to be Jesus' without objects between you and Him., without holy places, lit candles, sands of the holy land, without waters of the Jordan, without chains of campaigns, without sieges, declarations… I challenge you to be of Jesus and have only Jesus, and nothing else.
Fabiano Moreno