Culture Quote of the Day - God the great iconoclast

Images of the Holy easily become holy images – sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence?

Not my idea of God, but God.

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

How true this is. This is human nature, to create images of God, and then to focus on, I would say to exalt, and in the worst of times, to idolize (i.e., to worship, to commit idolatry) those images.

I love the image of God as the “great iconoclast.” And often, he uses other people – sometimes, the very Other, e.g., people from a different religious tradition altogether – to shatter our images.

May God “show up” (as some people put it) and shatter our images of Him, whenever and however necessary.

How should we treat the icons of others?

i·con·o·clast      

 [ahy-kon-uh-klast]  

–noun

1.

a breaker or destroyer of images, especially those set up forreligious veneration.

2.

a person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc., as being based on error or superstition.

Origin: 
1590–1600; < Medieval Latin īconoclastēs  < Medieval Greek eikonoklástēs

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I was visiting my daughter in Oxford yesterday, and we had an interesting discussion (we always do). I thought somehow of some of the discussions which get going on my Facebook page, in response to links that I post or statements I make (usually around issues having to do with perceptions of Muslims or Palestinians, Muslim-Christian relations, or various social issues). I was thinking that my posts tend to stir up some controversy, or to receive a negative reaction or response. And I was thinking how I think of myself as challenging conventional ways of looking at certain people or certain issues.


I recalled my Anthropology and Linguistics profs in University, and how they used to talk about being perceived as somewhat disruptive by other faculty members or by some in the administration. And I remember learning the word "iconoclast," as they expressed an aspect of their role or functioning at the University. And I thought, I have grown into the image of those "iconoclastic" profs I studied under; I have become an iconoclast.


I mentioned all of this to my daughter, and true to form, she challenged my thinking. She said that if in the original meaning an "iconoclast" was one who destroyed icons (i.e., peoples' sacred symbols), and in broader usage it "a person who attacks cherished beliefs..., etc.," then she doesn't see how that is a positive role. Rather, she said, we should be challenging (not destroying) "icons," i.e., cherished beliefs or perspectives, ethnocentric notions, traditions, ignorance, etc.; and our own beliefs are also open to challenge. The point, in other words (in my words), should be to shake us all from our parochial, ethnocentric views of life, of the world, of others, to challenge us all to see things from other perspectives, and to related to people as they are, not according to our stereoptyical (and inadequate) images of them.

And I realized, talking with her, that I do not aspire to be an iconoclast. I do not want to destroy peoples' ethnocentric worldviews, but to challenge them in a way that might lead to them being expanded. One of the problems, in fact, in the world today, is that people of different positions, perspectives, and religions, do want to destroy the "icons" (the values, beliefs, images, symbols, etc.) of those who are different than themselves, those with whom they disagree.

A fundamental question is, do we want to be people who destroy, or who build? I would suggest that to resist and seek to destroy the icons of others, is rooted in ethnocentrism; to move toward a positive relationship with different others is to move toward ethnorelativism, understanding and engaging with different others (and their worldviews), even when those others are ethnocentric, etc. (and even when they fight against your perspectives).

I came aware from our discussion realizing that I need to keep focusing on seeking to understand and relate to others, even when I find myself frustrated by them, engage in their world, and seek to find ways (within a framework of understanding) to challenge "icons," and to work toward building understanding, appreciation, relationship, etc.

Is there a word for that?