In his explanation of the underlying unity of all religious ideals, Hazrat Inayat Khan also gives a clear teaching of the worship of idols, beginning first with an analysis of the origin of idolatry.
Idolatry seems to have been prevalent throughout all ages as one of the principal forms of religion, though the names of the gods have varied among different people. The idea of gods and goddesses came from the two sides of man’s nature, one being idealism and the other veneration. Man, however primitive in his evolution, has always had a desire to look up to some object or some being as higher and better than himself. Sometimes he created an ideal from his own nature, and sometimes he was helped to such an ideal by another. There is no race in the world that can say that they have never known idolatry, although many today would look at it with contempt.
Man has known God more through goodness than through greatness, for no man really admires power. Man surrenders to power but admires goodness; thus the ideal of worship is based on two things: praise of goodness and surrender to a greater power. Support, protection, providence, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness were also counted as goodness. And the creation and destruction of all things and beings were counted as power. Combining these two, goodness and greatness, man completed the idea of God. And since God is one, he could not make Him two, though there are as many gods as there are human beings, since each person’s ideal is peculiar to himself.
Man could not complete his ideal without forming an idea of personality. He could only be satisfied by some form, which he naturally preferred to make rather like his own, or to make a combination of likenesses, or to portray the likeness that his mind could grasp. As each man differs from his fellow men in his ideas and thoughts, so each differed in his choice of the ideal idol. Therefore, if one called a particular idol his god, and his friends and followers and relations also accepted that god, then the one who was opposed to him said, ‘My god is different from yours,’ and he made another god. If any disadvantage arose from idol-worship, it was only this: that instead of bowing to one God, and uniting with their fellow creatures in the worship of one God, men have taken different routes in the name of different idol-gods, and thus many idolaters turned their backs on one another.
Idol-worship has been taught to mankind in order that they might learn to idealize God even if they were not sufficiently developed to understand the ideal of God in its true sense. This was a training, as a little girl receives her first training in domestic life by playing with dolls. Man can only idealize God as man, for every being, in the first place, sees himself in another. A rogue will fear the roguery of another, and a kind person will expect kindness from his fellow man.
Man had always thought of ghosts, spirits, jinns, fairies, and angels as having a human form. Although he has sometimes added wings or horns or a tail to make them different, yet he has kept his conception as close as possible to the human form. And so it is no wonder that he pictured his highest ideal in the form of man. But he called it the reverse; instead of saying, ‘I have created God in my own image,’ he said that God has created man in His own likeness. Even such ideals as that of liberty are pictured today in the form of woman or man, as may be seen in New York harbor and on the postage stamps of France.
To be continued…