Deuteronomy 5-9

Deut 4-9
This is a well written passage in 4:11.

You came and stood at the foot of the mountain while it blazed with fire to the very heavens with black clouds and deep darkness.

So it's a volcano type thing, I suppose. Now, this doesn't mean that we can just say "Oh, it was a natural phenom, that's all". Because Moses goes into the volcano and comes out alive. But definitely, whatever was in that mountain is what got put in the ark- and that thing killed people. I skimmed the Gardiner book "Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark" and he's got some interesting theories.

Somewhere around verse 14, the people are warned in a lengthy diatribe, not to make grave images and not to worship "the created and not the creator".

This is not about having pictures on the wall, or about paying tribute to different aspects of God. Of course whatever image of God we as humans try to create will be just a reflection of our own psyches. So we've definitely got to be careful there. But idolatry can be pretty insidious. Some Christian churches actually put loyalty to the inerrency of the Bible ahead of Jesus and even God. When I was little, my parent's denomination went through a brief period where they stressed pledging allegiance to a "Christian flag". Money can be an idol. It certainly is here in the US. Many of the worst atrocities of modern times have either been directly the result of greed, or somehow motivated by greed, often masked as religion or whatever the favorite style of government is (buy a new washing machine, do it for democracy's sake!)

Neo pagans are often accused of "worshipping the created and not the creator". Ironically, the people who do the most accusing are the sort of Christians who actively worship Jesus as God. Neo pagans (although I dislike using such a blanket term) worship the spark of God that is in all of nature, not the rock or tree itself. They're aware, as most pagans from at least the time the Greeks began writing down some serious literature have been aware, that Gods do not really reside in statues. Generally, when they forget that, that's when things go downhill for them, just like they would for Judaism, Christianity or Islam.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a huge problem with the idea of Jesus as God, but look at it this way. God has been God since the dawn of the universe, and will be God for eternity. Jesus lived 33 years. From the perspective of an immortal, 33 years is nothing. Even Jesus insists "I'm not more important than God!"