"The "real target" of the ancient prohibitions against idolatry was religion itself: "And not just the kind that got people dancing around a golden calf. It was warning us that no religious system could capture or contain the mystery of God. Yet in history, that's exactly what many of them would go on to claim. The Second Commandment was an early warning that the organizations that claimed to speak for God would become God's greatest rivals, the most dangerous idol of them all."
The commandment about idolatry would save us from our besetting sin of presumption: "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord."
...The third commandment about the name of God warns us not only about our casual presumptions. It reminds us of the limits of human language when we speak about the Wholly Other God. CS Lewis captures the practical implications of this in his Footnote to All Prayers.
http://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1271-the-most-dangerous-idol-of-them-allHe whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshiping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolaters, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.
Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate."
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