A modern philosopher supposes that every man necessarily believes either in God or in “idolą”, that is, in some sort of finite good—his nation, his art, power, knowledge, the amassing of money, “the ever new subjugation of woman”—which has become for him an absolute value and has set itself up between him and God; it is only necessary to demonstrate to him the conditioned nature of this good, in order to “shatter” the idol, and the diverted religious act will automatically return to the fitting object.
This conception presupposes that man’s relation to the finite goods he has “idolized” is of the same nature as his relation to God, and differs only in its object; for only with this presupposition could the mere substitution of the true for the false object save the erring man. But a man’s relation to the “special something” that usurps the throne of the supreme value of his life, and supplants eternity, rests always on experiencing and using an It, a thing, an object of enjoyment. For this relation alone is able to obstruct the prospect which opens toward God—it is the impenetrable world of It; but the relation which involves the saying of the Thou opens up this prospect ever anew. He who is dominated by the idol that he wishes to win, to hold, and to keep—possessed by a desire for possession—has no way to God but that of reversal, which is a change not only of goal but also of the nature of his movement. The man who is possessed is saved by being wakened and educated to solidarity of relation, not by being led in his state of possession towards God. It a man remains in this state what does it mean when he calls no longer on the name of a demon or of a being demonically distorted for him, but on the name of God? It means that from now on he blasphemes. It is blasphemy when a man wishes, after the idol has crashed behind the altar, to pile up an unholy sacrifice to God on the desecrated place.
He who loves a woman, and brings her life to present realisation in his, is able to look in the Thou of her eyes into a beam of the eternal Thou. But he who eagerly desires “ever new subjugation” do you wish to hold out to his desire a phantom of the Eternal? He who serves his people in the boundlessness of destiny, and is willing to give himself to them, is really thinking of God. But do you suppose that the man to whom the nation is a god, in whose service he would like to enlist everything (for in the nation’s he exalts his own image), need only be given a feeling of disgust—and he would see the truth? And what does it mean that a man is said to treat money, embodied non-being, “as if it were God”? What has the lust of grabbing and of laying up treasure in common with the joy in the presence of the Present One? Can the servant of Mammon say Thou to his money? And how is he to behave towards God when he does not understand how to say Thou? He cannot serve two masters—not even one after the other: he must first learn to serve in a different way.
He who has been converted by this substitution of object now “holds” a phantom that he calls God. But God, the eternal Presence, does not permit Himself to be held. Woe to the man so possessed that he thinks he possesses God!