This year in the Glendale Adventist Academy Religion IV class, we have been studying the difference between Ancient Pagan Literature and the Bible. We have taken a close look at each to better understand how people view God and what the correct view of God or the gods is. We have analyzed wisdom literature from Ancient Babylonian sources such as the Gilgamesh Epic and the Enuma Elish and compared them with wisdom literature from the Bible like Job and Proverbs. The difference comes in how the gods treat humans and how the human is viewed.
In Ancient Babylonian Literature, gods were created. They were made or born into existence. They created by killing other gods and using the body parts to make other things. The gods were always fighting for power and were always looking out for themselves. They created mankind to be slaves for them. They wanted man to work and take the load off of the gods. Man was driven to do whatever the gods asked of them. If man ever grew unruly or even too loud, the gods would kill them off without even a second thought.
The God that the Bible talks about created everything on the Earth in six days. He created by speaking things into existence. But He did create something on the Earth by forming. He made man. He used the clay of the earth to form man and breathed life into him. The God in the Bible cares for humans. He does not treat man like cattle or slaves. He made man in His own image and loves man. Any pain or suffering that is felt on this earth is caused by a prideful, fallen angel named Lucifer. He wanted to be like God in every way and did not except the love that God was giving him.
In this blog we are going to point out the futility of worshipping idols. Worshipping idols may put you in good standing in the view of the world, but it does not help in the long run and you end up not being happy. Some may say that, I do not worship an idol. This may mean that you do not worship a little statue or picture, but there are idols all around us. The dictionary states that an idol is “any person or thing regarded with blind admiration, adoration, or devotion” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/idol). That is scary. An idol can be anything that you foolishly give all your attention to. In the blog we are going to show you some examples of idols and give them a human form, but the idols the actors represent are very real.
