Is Not This Thing in My Right Hand a Lie?

On the making of idols and what to do with them

I made a video last year in 2023 after reading something in the book of Isaiah that felt weirdly prescient. After all, this was a book written anywhere between six and eight centuries before Christ (depending on who you ask), yet it had passages like this one:

⁹ All who make idols are nothing,
and the things they treasure are worthless.
Those who would speak up for them are blind;
they are ignorant, to their own shame.
¹⁰ Who shapes a god and casts an idol,
which can profit nothing?
¹¹ People who do that will be put to shame;
such craftsmen are only human beings.
Let them all come together and take their stand;
they will be brought down to terror and shame.

¹² The blacksmith takes a tool
and works with it in the coals;
he shapes an idol with hammers,
he forges it with the might of his arm.
He gets hungry and loses his strength;
he drinks no water and grows faint.
¹³ The carpenter measures with a line
and makes an outline with a marker;
he roughs it out with chisels
and marks it with compasses.
He shapes it in human form,
human form in all its glory,
that it may dwell in a shrine.
¹⁴ He cut down cedars,
or perhaps took a cypress or oak.
He let it grow among the trees of the forest,
or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow.
¹⁵ It is used as fuel for burning;
some of it he takes and warms himself,
he kindles a fire and bakes bread.
But he also fashions a god and worships it;
he makes an idol and bows down to it.
¹⁶ Half of the wood he burns in the fire;
over it he prepares his meal,
he roasts his meat and eats his fill.
He also warms himself and says,
“Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.”
¹⁷ From the rest he makes a god, his idol;
he bows down to it and worships.
He prays to it and says,
“Save me! You are my god!”
¹⁸ They know nothing, they understand nothing;
their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see,
and their minds closed so they cannot understand.
¹⁹ No one stops to think,
no one has the knowledge or understanding to say,
“Half of it I used for fuel;
I even baked bread over its coals,
I roasted meat and I ate.
Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left?
Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”
²⁰ Such a person feeds on ashes; a deluded heart misleads him;
he cannot save himself, or say,
“Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”

It’s a beautiful piece of poetry — so grounded and filled with detail — and I could not shake the sense that it was also speaking to me today, 2500 years later, inviting me to reconsider my relationship with the device that lay quietly in my pocket, waiting for me.

Despite making this video, it took me another year to finally get rid of my smartphone. It has been freeing in many ways. Still, other idols crop up to take its place. Life in the modern world — maybe life in any world — demands vigilance.