If you read my column from last month, or from many previous months for that matter, you will know that I hold one teaching of Jesus above all others: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”  This is often called the Summary of the Law.

Now, that message did not originate with Jesus. Its origin is lost in time but it forms the root of Jewish thought and worship in the shema, the foundational Judaic statement of faith. But Jesus looked far back into the roots of Judaism and added to the shema a particular personal emphasis on that command in that we are to love one another as someone who is like ourselves – meaning someone no different from us at all.

The prophet Micah (whose name means “who is like Yahweh/God”) in the 7^th century before Christ declared God’s frustrations with the people of Israel who had failed to understand and act upon the most basic of Yahweh/God’s intentions. Micah declared, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). This prophetic declaration is the same as Jesus’ Summary of the Law. True religion and truth faith are found in our primary responsibility to demonstrate our love for God in how we treat one another on a very personal level – period.

However, just as Micah’s people had forgotten the desires of Yahweh/God in how they maintained their corporate religiosity, so have most of our religious institutions today.

Believe it or not, true religious faith is not about orthodoxy and conformity in doctrine, interpretation, and/or worship. It has been my privilege (or perhaps my burden) to have spent the past three decades immersed in “church.” In crass terms I can say I have pretty well “seen it all and done it all,” and I have learned that far too often we ignore the words of Jesus and Micah.  Sad to say, that means we indulge in institutional idolatry, Biblical idolatry, liturgical idolatry, doctrinal idolatry, ideological idolatry, and behavioral idolatry – all of which are in violation of the first commandment given to Moses: “I Am, the Lord, your God, and you shall have no other gods before me.” [my translation of the original Hebrew] (Exodus 20:3 and Deuteronomy 5:7).  When we make anything at all more important than love for God as demonstrated in how we love one another we engage in idolatry and violate the most fundamental of all the divine commandments, be we Jewish, Christian, or Muslim.

This came home to me as very true one day when I stumbled into a church meeting after digging in a community garden all day. I was sweaty, dirty, and dressed only in filthy shorts, a T-shirt, and muddy boots, searching for a drink of water. The gathered assembly in that public hall were all smartly dressed, and just alike (dark suits, white shirts, and ties for the men, and A-line, flower patterned, calf length dresses for the women), each one with a Bible in hand. Needless to say, I did not “fit in” and was immediately made to feel so.  These were obviously devout people who were engaged in worship, but as I discreetly made my way out after enduring many contemptuous looks I could not help but wonder what god was being revered.

It seems that the focus these days throughout all religious traditions, be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or something else, is on ourselves, our all too human desires and interpretations, and being sure that everything is “done just right” according to social standards.  Sadly, it is an attitude and failing which slips quickly into idolatry on every level.

By Michael Doty