Washington D.C.

I got to school early this morning and read Deuteronomy 1-6. I've always been interested in the Old Testament that God made with His people, so I decided to brush up on it. Plus, Christy has been reading it and sparked a recent interest in me. 

Since I really detest how some Christians in America have woven democracy and Jesus into an inseparable fabric, these verses really stuck out to me--Deuteronomy 4:15-18 and also Exodus 20:4, respectively:

"So keep watch on yourselves with care; for you saw no form of any sort on the day when the voice of the Lord came to you in Horeb out of the heart of the fire: so that you may not be turned to evil ways and make for yourselves an image in the form of any living thing, male or female, or any beast of the earth, or winged bird of the air, or of anything which goes flat on the earth, or any fish in the water under the earth."

"You are not to make an image or picture of anything in heaven or on the earth or in the waters under the earth"

Jefferson Memorial? Mount Rushmore? Lincoln Memorial? Graven images? Statues of Mary, the Apostles, and the saints? What about countless scores of other Christian paraphernalia depicting angels and the innumerable portraits of Jesus? It would seem so! 

I've always disliked Washington D.C. because it's a city-wide monument to men. Granted, they are men who have done great things (and they've had important women in their lives as well), but that doesn't change the fact that God has commanded that no image be made of such things. God has actually commanded it. 

That doesn't mean that no good has come from any of those things. The well-meaning things that we do are not incapable of being redeemed by Jesus. BUT we should not continue to do the things we know to be wrong if we have seen a positive result from them in the past. 

The next verse in Deuteronomy goes like this (4:19):

"And when your eyes are lifted up to heaven, and you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the army of heaven, do not let yourselves be moved to give them worship, or become the servants of what the Lord has given equally to all peoples under heaven."

Horoscopes? It blows my mind how Christ-followers can follow their horoscopes every day. 

I am very passionate about these types of things because they're the "minute, small" pieces of America that we've let enter the Church. So what are we, as individuals changed by the love of Jesus, going to do about it?