CREATING AND SERVING IDOLS
It is a fact that whatever can be seen and is predictable is not spiritual and therefore is not a product of faith. Religion pretends to be spiritual, but, because it can be seen and because it is the result of considerable human efforts of one kind or another, it is flesh — not spirit.

STUDY TIP: See Religion is not Faith.

Going one step further, it can be said that religion in any form is idolatry because humans use their various skills to create something that can be seen and managed out of natural things (e.g. people, places, food, drink, rituals, etc.). Then, after creating these things, religious people assign spiritual value to them. They consider what they have created to be holy and sacred. This is no different than crafts-persons making a physical idol out of wood, stone or metal. It is all idolatry and all people involved in the process of establishing a religious organization — including its leaders — are guilty of creating idols. Furthermore, by creating religious organizations and buildings in which those idols can sell their religious merchandise (e.g teachings, ceremonies, rituals, etc.), religious people effectively worship and follow those idols and serve them with money, praise, honor, position and esteem.

Religious people will argue vigorously that their religion is not an idol and that their religious leaders are not idols whom they serve, but they argue with logical arguments not from God’s point of view. To the natural human mind, justification for all this organizational stuff of religion is found in a literal reading of the Bible regarding tabernacles, temples, priests, sacrifices and various rituals. Indeed we do see Biblical references to times, and ceremonies in physical structures (e.g. buildings, altars, etc.) and physical objects (e.g. food, drink, candles, incense, crosses, clothing, etc.) that suggest the application of these things to worship, but this thinking conveniently ignores the fact that faith does not depend on things that can be seen.

All these religious activities based on literal interpretation of the Bible ignore the first the natural and then the spiritual principle which provides that God first speaks to us in human language and then in spiritual language. Religion also ignores that the Bible is full of Symbols, Signs, Types, Copies, Shadows and Patterns. Such ignorance makes the way for gross deceptions about what God really wants.

God applies the first the natural and then the spiritual principle throughout the Bible as he introduces spiritual concepts that people will not easily understand by using physical concepts that they will understand. And then he disciplines them to discern the difference between the physical (i.e. unclean, evil) and spiritual (i.e. clean, good) so that they will eventually reject physical religion in favor of spiritual worship.

The ubiquitous presence of people acting in predictable ways at certain times in particular places using physical objects in religious worship is wrong thinking that is based solely  on literal interpretations of the Bible. Yes, the Bible does show God relating to people at certain times, in certain places, using physical objects in worship, but God, being spirit, is not limited to time, place, or by any object in his activities. Man, on the other hand, being flesh, interprets the Bible literally and creates religion out of what he reads and understands with his natural, intellectual mind.

Because human intelligence and effort (i.e. flesh) are used to create religion, man’s religion is defined by time, space and physical objects. Man does not realize that the things reported in the Bible are only symbols, copies, types and shadows of spiritual things which cannot be seen, touched, heard or tasted. All these physical things  are necessary for worship of idols in Old/First Covenant religion, but they are not necessary for spiritual worship by New Covenant disciples. Not only are they not necessary, God hates all the physical objects, traditions and behaviors associated with religion. They are all elements of the religious, temple system that Jesus symbolically destroyed to fulfill God’s commands to tear down idols and high places.