"The third stage of the evolution of the concept of God is reached in God's revelation to Moses " What is new is that God reveals himself as the God of history rather than the God of nature; most importantly, the distinction between God and an idol finds its full expression in the idea of a nameless God."
In other words, when Moses asks God for God's name there on Mount Sinai, God replies "I am That [or Who] I am" ( EYEYEH asher EYEYEH in Hebrew ). God has with this statement lifted Himself above the category of a thing--like an idol--and pushed Himself into a state of being or existence far above humanity's imaginings and understanding. God is , which places Him above all of the named idols of Mesopotamia, Canaan, and Egypt. Like humankind, God is stating that He exists, and it is not His Name that makes Him God: It is His Being, in the broadest sense of that word. Like humankind, this Nameless God of the Hebrews is not a "thing," and to try to make Him a "thing" is an act of evil--perhaps the ultimate act of evil--just as it is with humanity, who He made in His Own Image. (I use the male pronoun because it is proper English, not because I believe that God is male. God Is, period.)
This also means that all of those fundamentalists out there who try and make the Bible the "Word of God," are guilty of idolatry. To describe any work of man, any "thing," as being God's word, image, desire, or plan, is to create an idol to try and worship the Unnamable and Unfathomable. We cannot understand God, only be in awe of Him/Her/It. And for many of us, to be in awe of a being can mean that you are afraid of them. But it can also mean admiration or love to a degree that is far above anything you have ever experienced before in your life. Awe can even mean all three of them at the same time. God's name is not Yahweh, as so many fundamentalist ministers and believers try and insist that his name is.
I'd better watch out: by describing wealth, the Bible as the Word of God, multinational corporations, and an all-encompassing freedom that has no ongoing duties or responsibilities between the individual members of a society as idolatrous things, I am very likely to wake up one morning and discover Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and the other religious Right zealots, with the Tea Party, including the most hard core supporters of Ron Paul and Ayn Rand, in tow (arriving on buses provided by the Coors, the Kochs, and the Waltons no doubt), knocking down my door in order to burn me at the stake. Oh well, I guess it's time to warm up the kettles of boiling oil and molten lead. If we are going to go medieval on each other, we may as well go all the way.
Just joking about the oil and lead. (No Quasimodo, continue with your work. Ignore what I am writing to placate the public. Yes, yes, extra turnip and onion in your gruel tonight, just as I promised. Good Quasimodo, Good Quasimodo: Yes, yes, Master loves you. Now, go back to your work.) Let's see, where were we?
I could go into a very long dissertation why it is important to all of us--secular and spiritual; theist, deist, agnostic, and atheist--that God is Nameless, and the profound effect that this has had, and continues to have, on Western Civilization. Instead, read Erich Fromm's book, You Shall Be as Gods, together with two of Bishop John Shelby Spong's books, This Hebrew Lord, and The Sins of Scripture, if you want more information on the subject. This article is supposed to be about poverty and wealth, freedom and responsibility, and the sick idolatry of corporations as human beings.
There is idolatry inherent in the legal legerdemain of the corporation being made into "a person." This has lead in turn to the creation of a destructive form of individuality among living human beings that is neither realistic nor sustainable for humanity as a whole. This bastardized form of individualism absolutely refuses to recognize any inherent duty or responsibility to the rest of humanity. I believe that this arises out of some unconscious attempt to compensate for the diminution of their own humanity by granting a thing--the corporation--personhood. This has led them to the alienated mental viewpoint of the sociopath, not the stable, mentally mature, and healthy viewpoint of a self-actualized individual.
This has led to an economic outlook among far Right Libertarians that is nothing less than social Darwinism taken to the point of the negation of society and all that society stands for in a positive sense. Many worship at the altar of the economic theories of the Austrian School of Economics, which proved so disastrous to Germany's Weimar Republic. Others bow down to the "wisdom" of the Chicago School of Economics of Milton Friedman, which has proven so catastrophic in the last forty years for Argentina, Chile, Poland, Russia, and Indonesia. The negative effects of the Chicago School have been thoroughly chronicled by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine.
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