Cultural Idolatry

Indonesia is a vast country which has different kinds of religion. Bali, an island in Indonesia, is a unique island where the major religion is Hinduism. We could see many Hindu temples called Pura which is the place to pray. In a complex of Pura, they built many temples. The biggest one which is usually in the center of the area is designated to pray to God. However, the rest of temples around the biggest temple are purposely built for their ancestors’ spirit because they believe that their ancestors’ spirit are still alive. The purpose for built the ancestors’ temple is to respect the spirit of the ancestors, yet to pray and beg something from them. This phenomenon of praising the ancestors is not only happened in Bali, but also in many areas in Indonesia in another kind of religions.

Cultural idolatry as mentioned in the example above explains about a community who believes that there is God who created the universe, but in the other hand, they also praise their died ancestors. From the bible perspective as we read in Hebrews 9:27, “Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment”; we can conclude that every human being who has been passed away has no power anymore in this earth. Since a man has two aspects (dichotomy): body and spirit/soul, so after a man died, he has no body but his spirit/soul will directly enter the eternal life. If they believe in Jesus, the spirit will go to heaven, on the contrary it will go to hell if they don’t believe in Jesus.