Daily Prophets
Day 141
“And God said to me, human, do you see what they do? The great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, to drive Me far away from My sanctuary? And I went in and saw;…all the idols of the house of Israel portrayed on the surrounding wall. …have you seen what the elders of Israel do in the dark, every man in his rooms of pictures? For they say, the Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.(Ezekiel 8:6,10,12).
The first verse above is a haunting question that is still ringing in my ears and God is still asking, I believe. It is the question that begs God’s call to Abraham and all of us since to:”Lift up your eyes and see!”. We have become more adept than our ancestors, possibly, at not seeing what we see because we see what we want to. They were masters of this behavior as we can see from the verses quoted above and the words of all the prophets.
Do you see what you do, is the question that is calling out to me. I am humbled by looking at the ways we have driven God out of God’s house, not just the Churches, Mosques, Temples and Synagogues, how we have driven God out of our world and consciousness through the idols we have made of God. How often have we looked at our abominations and seen them as holy acts instead? We have become more and more entrenched in our own ideas, political correctness, self-deceptions, idolatry, etc. We are so entrenched that we are unable to “lift up our eyes and see!”. We need cataract surgery in order to lift the film that blinds us to our abominable actions. We need to “circumcise the foreskin of our hearts” as Moses commands us in Torah.
Yet, we don’t. We engage in different forms of idolatry, some more sophisticated and some so vulgar that it is impossible for us to believe it is idolatry. We are do engaged in our self-deception and deceiving another(s) we have come to buy our own lies! This is the greatest abomination of all to me; because just as the study of Torah leads to the living/doing of Torah, the engagement in self-deception and deceiving another(s) leads to living an idolatrous life and doing idolatrous actions.
We hide behind God’s words, proclaiming the ONE WAY to salvation and God. Yet, we are the idolators seeking everyone to follow us for our gain, not for God’s glory nor gain, according to Ezekiel here. Today, we don’t even hide the idols in the darkness of our rooms, rather we proudly display them with the buildings we name for someone who has enough money to pay for them. We worship names like Trump, Bezos, etc. not because they have done anything Holy, rather because they are loud, rich and lie with impunity. The charlatans who proclaim “on advice of counsel” in criminal or civil matters are hiding behind the bill of rights to hide their own guilt. The idol worshipers who twist God’s words and commandments from their pulpits, who say one thing to everyone and hold themselves to lower standards, who accuse another(s) of what they themselves are doing, the ‘dark money’ people who are pulling our strings of government so we are no longer a government of the people, by the people and for the people, we are a government of the rich and powerful.
The people are told that God has forsaken us because of homosexuality, the immigrants we take in, the Jews, the Blacks, the Asians, etc by these charlatans. We are told that _____ has caused all of this trouble(fill in the blank) and that is why we have to do such and such. God has forsaken us because of YOUR idolatry is the pitch that this Shysters, Con people, Snake Oil Salespeople are using and it is working. These are the people who have abandoned God, these are the people who Ezekiel is saying caused the destruction of the Temple, Jerusalem and the defeat of Judah.
In recovery, we are constantly aware of the abominations we did in our life prior to recovery and, while we are nowhere near perfect today, we have left the paths that lead us to those abominations. We are constantly in conversation with our “higher consciousness” and with another(s) to keep ourselves in check and out of the paths that led to destroying our lives and the lives of another(s)! We no longer worship at the feet of idols, we know what is truly important, connection. We are aware that no amount of fame, fortune, etc will bring us authentic connection and we are not willing to engage in faux connection. In recovery, we have left the darkness of our rooms and celebrate our connection to God/Higher Power by walking in the Light of God and being grateful for God’s show of Grace to us.
I also have done abominable actions. I also “lift up my eyes and see” every day. I realize that I also deceived myself to see what I wanted and not what was. I bought into people who were actually just deceiving me and, once again, I am on the outside looking in at idol worshipers, lawyers who lie, people for whom I am an easy scapegoat and ‘friends’ who deserted me. I have a part in this experience and my actions were wrong/stupid and I am portrayed as evil by the people I counted on. It is sad and I can relate to God’s sadness here. I also am committed to not be “indifferent to the sublime wonder of living” anymore and to celebrate connection to real friends and to people who walk their talk. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark