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Iconoclast means someone who challenges traditional beliefs.
The etymology is from the words eikon (image)
and klastes (breaker). The word was
coined to refer to religious folk who destroyed images that co-religionists had
made of God.
Modern-day iconoclasm is what ROTB is about – replacing
monolithic, arcane notions of the divine with what makes more sense.
Before I continue in that charge, let me give you some
history.
In the Second Book of Kings, Hezekiah is one
of the first celebrated iconoclasts. The controversy on challenging traditional
beliefs got really heated in early 8th century Byzantium, when the
hot issue of the day was whether or not it was acceptable to have a pictorial
representation of the divine.
(N.B.: while it is glossed over and even seemingly biblical
literate types don’t know about it, the Hebrew Bible contains numerous
references to God’s corporality. We won’t go in-depth with this here though.)
Hezekiah
is a noted Biblical iconoclast – ridding his world of pictorial
representations of the divine. [If
you read the Bible account before him, you will find that God “walked” in the
garden (Gen. iii. 8); closed the ark door with “his hand”; “smells” sacrifices,
“ate” with Abraham (Gen. xviii. 8); “wrote with a hand” upon the tables of
stone (Ex. xxxi. 18), had a “back” seen by Moses, and more. See anthropopathism
and learn a new word. ]
Iconoclasm changed in early 8th century Byzantium where the
question was whether or not it was acceptable to have a pictorial
representation of the God-the-son. By this time, no Muslim, Christian, or Jew
was depicting God-the-father.
The idea is that if is it certain, it is limiting, and if it
is limited, it is not God.
An extension of this is the notion that God has no name.
To this end, anyone suggesting that there is a proper path to
God, does not worship the same notion of the divine that I do.
As Jiddu
Krishnamurti said, “Truth is a pathless land.”
There’s no one, singular path to God!
As William Blake said, “Jesus Christ is the only true God,
and so am I, and so are you.”
There is no notion of
God that is more correct than the one that you have – or are working on.
Let us love each other and each other’s notions of the
divine.
Let us smash the false idols of certainty when it comes to
the limitless.
Let us reclaim the word “God” for our notions of the
divine.
Let us be modern-day iconoclasts.
Spiritual-religious advice: Claim God as our own, if only linguistically.
