Torah Tuesdays: Harsh Idolatry Commandments, and How Some Jews Weaponize Them Against Christians

It may surprise some readers to know that in Israel, "missionary" is a dirty word.

Already in Israel, it is illegal to encourage a minor to change his religion. In 2023, a bill was introduced by fundamentalist religious leaders to criminalize all solicitation for religious conversion. (The bill didn't pass, though it gets re-upped every few years by far-right religious parties who see it as their religious duty.) Even tourists can be denied entry into Israel if they're suspected of missionary activity.

What does this have to do with the Torah? 

As part of EtzMitzvot, every Tuesday I add more commandments to the visual tree. This week I added the highlighted commandments concerning idolatry:

Specifically these commandments:

• Don't pity idolaters.
• Don't show compassion to idolators.
• Don't save idolators.

Whew - "don't pity", "don't show compassion", and "don't save them" - harsh! Certainly not politically correct. Maybe even counterintuitive to what many Christians understand to be God's character. 

But it nonetheless is God's character to hate idolatry. Historically, idolatry nearly destroyed Israel on multiple occasions. The Torah's harsh prohibitions on idols reflects God's character: it shows God's deep love and care for His people. God doesn't want His people to turn to delusions, sexual immorality, or self-harm, and the Canaanite cults involved all three.

These 3 commandments are one of several idolatry commandments that Maimonides derives from the Torah, and all three are based on Deuteronomy 13:7-10:

“Suppose your brother—your mother’s son—or your son or daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your best friend of your own soul misleads you secretly, saying, ‘Let’s go and serve other gods’—that you and your fathers have not known, from among the gods of the peoples around you, near you or far off from you, from one end of the earth to the other. You are not to give in or listen to him, your eye is not to pity him, and you are not to spare or conceal him. Instead, you will surely put him to death. Your hand should be the first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. You are to stone him with stones to death because he tried to entice you away from Adonai your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and never again will they do such an evil thing as this in your midst.

In essence, anyone who tells Israel to turn to other gods receives the death penalty. No citizen of Israel can hide an idolater, pity him, save him from penal judgment. Instead, he is to be stoned to death.

This commandment was given at a time and context where the nations were worshiping figurines of gold and silver, sacrificing humans to gods. The Canaanites were self-mutilating to worship Baal and engaging in temple cult prostitution, homosexuality and bestiality as forms of Asherah worship.

A Canaanite tablet from 1300 BC depicting Asherah, a Canaanite goddess whose worship appears repeatedly in the Tenakh. It is this sort of idolatry ancient Israel was surrounded with. God's commandments in the Torah were mean to prevent such idolatry.

To the original Israelite audience of the Torah, these prohibitions on idolatry would have been clear: worshiping Baal and Asherah is forbidden under threat of death.

What do commandments about idols have to do with modern Judaism and Christianity? Much, it turns out.

Some forms of Orthodox Judaism misapply these commandments to forbid Christianity and persecute Christians.

Chabad, for example, reinterprets these commandments as prohibitions on "missionaries" and "missionizing":

Suddenly, the commandments about not worshiping idols like Asherah now apply to Christians following the God of the Bible through the Jewish Messiah from Nazareth.

It is no wonder that some Jewish religious extremists have harassed Jewish followers of Jesus: barging into Christian events with bullhorns, denying or revoking citizenship of Jewish Christians in Israel, planting bombs at the homes of Messianic leaders. In the eyes of some religious extremists, people who call the Tenakh their Bible, call on the God of Israel, and follow the Jewish man from Nazareth are idolaters and missionizers.

I understand why some hardline Jewish religionists believe that. I understand how they misapply it to Christians. To them, Christians aren't following God, they're following a false god named Jesus. (Some religious Jews are more nuanced and will say that Christians are following God plus another entity besides God.)

The reality is hard to understand but nonetheless true. Christians are following only one God, the God of the Bible. 

God sent Jesus to bring humanity to Himself. He provided atonement and forgiveness of sins just before the Temple and Levitical system was destroyed. God revealed that Jesus is not merely a man, but an appearance of Himself, not unlike how God appeared to Abraham. This is not two or three gods, as Islam and Judaism misunderstand. God, Messiah, and the Spirit of God are not 3 gods. It is one God.

This is why Christians have no problem with Jesus saying that the Shema -- "Hear O Israel, the LORD our God is one" -- is the most important commandment. God is one, and the most important commandment is to worship him alone. 

If Jesus is a different god, as some parts of Judaism and Islam believe, then indeed it's right to apply these anti-idolatry commandments to Christians.

But if Jesus is an appearance of God, and there's only one God, then worshiping that one God is right, and applying these Torah commandments against Christians is a grave misinterpretation and perversion of the Torah.