In Indonesia, in old days when the East Indie proclaimed their independence and named the nation as Indonesia, the Chinese influenced religions got little to almost no place in the constitution acknowledging. As the only religion being acknowledged by the government is limited to five, the Chinese influenced religions need to make do and assimilated their place of worship.
They come to be known under the label of Buddhism in Indonesia, the Taoism and Confucianism, so to speak.
Now, my point about asking a temple visitation, is here,
Buddhism only acknowledge Buddha and maybe some bodhisattvas and arahat depending to their main theological doctrines.
Taoist is a long acculturation of cultural and historical figures and mythological superstitious figure,
While Confucianism focused on the worship of ancestors and good moral living
Let's focus in the two figures of religion and let set Confucianism aside for now.
Taoism worshipped deities, like the one from the famous ancient novel of Journey to The West, monkey king sun wukong, dragon king, jade emperor and suchalikes.
The depictions of Taoism about their beliefs in deities is pretty elaborate and complex.
Some deities depicted in clean and neat appearance, some in anger expressions, horrible depictions and many inhuman or hybrid form of a human and animals and anything in between along the way.
They may be prone to closely tied with the carpenter or the artist imagination and interpretation while making the illustrations about those characters.
But the very point to pick about is about how they depicted this supreme beings and suchalikes as their object of worship.
Buddhism like Mahayana also incorporated statues depicting some characters believed to be holy or enlightened beings, as an object and aid in worship.
And they often also had the same concept like how Taoist depicted their deities.
Take one example, a bodhisattva named Avalokitesvara, or mostly known under the name Guanyin, the goddess of compassion.
The bodhisattvas originally a disciple of Siddhartha Gautama during his days on earth, and later this disciple also attain an enlightened state and according to the literature, Avalokitesvara is already entitled to be a Buddha already, yet refused to be Buddha for his compassion for the suffering of all creation.
During the Buddhism widespread in ancient China, the Avalokitesvara that originally a male, turned into a female under a new mythology Avalokitesvara choose to incarnate into human female to better showcase their compassion as a female figure is closely identic with compassion and tenderness.
Some further elaboration about Avalokitesvara through the history make the Avalokitesvara we know today.
Some depiction of the all compassionate merciful boddhisatva is the ten headed and 1000 hands Guanyin
Ten heads to face all directions in the universe, an a thousands hands to reach all creation to bring aid in their times of needs.
This worship persist for centuries and bring the pattern we know today in their beliefs.
But my point is not about how this belief or that, but rather the very iconography illustrations is the object of nitpick today.
We know that according to Bible, God created humankind in His own image, we were created according to the anatomical structure like how God's physical form appears to be.
That very physical form is the base for my arguments and rants today.
Yes, illustration and carvings can be interpreted as an art form, as a mere exaggeration of interpretation.
But by that reason alone, that is how I am going to deny those deities as a real deity.
If you need ten heads to help you to understand human's plea, then you sure is not omnipresence, omniscient, and of you need a thousand hands to help humankind, then you're surely not omnipotent either.
If that to be so, this impotent deities already proof themselves as a feeble creature, that not always able to help the universe.
And let us return about the physical depictions.
If a deity really appears to have three eyes, or any other deformities or extra limbs where they were not supposed to be originally, they were an abomination to the image of God.
Just as we are not born with four legs with six arms and three heads, the very same is the case of God. And that image is Holy, because He, the prototype for our physical form is Holy.
Then come this mutants with ten heads, long tongue and green skin with monstrous fangs oozing saliva everywhere.
They were not object of worship, they were peversion to the image of God, because by depicting themselves in those form to showcase superiority, those deformed mutants were an insult to the source of example, God Himself.
Just like the scary and gruesome gory depictions of Hindu deities, both the perversions of this exaggeration of compassions and whatnot from Buddist holy beings and those deities of Taoism, the were not much different in essence with Bram Stoker's Dracula, a fictional character made out of a fickle of imagination, to sow terror into human kind and with such, bring a reference and entitlement for those created figures.
God, is the standard for how we looked physically, we were created in His image.
By tilting the form, into a mix-matched deformation, we are insulting God.
God is omnipresent, He exist every and nowhere at the same time, He is omniscient, He know about all things and everything that happened yesterday, today, and tomorrow without fail nor any limitations or possible chance of error.
God also is omnipotent, He is sovereign and His will is not bounded nor limited by anything ever, He can do whatever He pleases as how He see them fit.
And if a figure claimed to be a deity need some extra limb and appendages to help them serve their godhood duties, they were impotent in the first place and never deserved any godhood at all.
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