)
Faith is the birthright of all humanity. The human soul is connected to its divine source and draws life from it. As a result, it is natural for people to believe there is a higher, eternal power beyond the visible and that our lives are tied to the eternal. The value of our lives has meaning far beyond our routine ordinary existence on earth. That is why wherever people have settled we find that they established some kind of religious life. Based on this innate faith as a starting point, various human societies created religions for themselves which provided a framework for their faith and invested their lives with meaning. Generally, the founders of these religions imagined relatively abstract concepts of the gods. However, since abstract ideas are difficult to grasp, they created images and idols to give concrete expression to these higher powers. Presumably insightful people with depth understood that the idols and images were only symbols of the higher powers. However, most people believed the gods literally lived within their representations.
Since the gods were designed by people who sought to infuse their lives with faith, they personified everything their designers valued, such as life, the forces of nature, fertility, war, strength, victory, money, love, beauty, and so on. This created a destructive dynamic between the human desire for pleasure and honor and the heartfelt longing for faith. Rather than using faith to elevate people's aspirations by improving themselves and transforming their character for good, thereby increasing goodness and blessing in the world, faith degenerated into idolatry. Idol worship granted meaning and justification to the world that exists with its materialism and impulses. This blocked the path to the true faith in the one God, which would elevate and improve the world. For idolators, faith was reduced to a tool to promote their own desires and pleasures, with no interest in moral correction. To satisfy their own needs idolators were prepared to offer sacrifices, cast spells, or engage in magical practices to bring themselves wealth, defeat their enemies, and obtain whatever they wanted.
