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Committing the sin of idolatry limits divine revelation to an exact idol or specific image. This reduces people’s faith and awareness in all aspects of life to a narrow perspective. As a result, people become incapable of transcending their restricted environment with all its problems, and preventing them from actualizing moral solutions to improve their lot.
This idolatrous worldview led people to justify the actions of evil rulers who murdered, stole, and enslaved, since they were simply imitating the ways of the gods who protected them.
Therefore, the Torah absolutely forbids creating idols and images to concretize divine faith. By extension, it is prohibited to categorize God definitively, whether in intellectual or moral terms. Any definition limits God by favoring one value over others, thereby contradicting God’s infinite nature, which is unlimited and undefined.
Since an idolatrous belief confines and reduces the divine, it is easily challenged by bringing up the values it excludes. Such questions without answers gradually increase until the believer is forced to deny it. However, since people are searching for some form of faith, they might replace it with a new idolatrous belief. Since this too is idolatry, the person will once again be disappointed, and ultimately reject it. Humanity waivers between acceptance and rejection of idolatry without ever acquiring peace of mind.
Only by decisively rejecting idolatry can people achieve pure faith in one God Who created everything - physical and metaphysical and who is beyond definition. This is faith in God's uniqueness. This pure faith does not foster questions that lead to denial. Rather, it motivates believers to continuously advance and elevate their service of God. Monotheism allows the Jewish people to accept the Torah and its commandments, whereby we can adhere to God’s ways and add vitality to the world by working to improve it under God's sovereignty.
