702. Similarly the truth in the exalted reminder to "worship God in spirit and in truth" also becomes, as a result of what has been written above, a clear fact. If everything that exists is the "image of God" or God's only visible revelation, it must be the case that an individual being or a single object cannot possibly be anything other than a localised area or a fraction of the "image of God" and not the whole. But if what we see of the "image of God" is not the whole, any opinion based on only the fraction that we see of the image cannot possibly be a rightful expression of the whole. It is false to assume that the fraction is the whole. And it is on such falsehoods that every being's worship of God is based, as long as they ascribe to God a certain particular way of being, with everything that is outside this way of being being ascribed to another origin, an "enemy" of the Godhead, the "devil". To deprive the Godhead of certain specific forms of manifestation that one dislikes or considers to be "sinful" is in the final analysis the same as to form or create. The result of this can therefore be only a "created reality". The result or product that we have created in this way can therefore in no circumstances whatsoever be a rightful expression of the Godhead; it is on the contrary a firm expression of the limitations of our own mentality. To express this image as the Godhead is "idolatry".
      As long as we ascribe to the Godhead everything that we think is good and pleasant and ascribe to the devil everything that we dislike, everything that does not fit into what we think of as morality and idealism, this cannot come under the concept of worshipping God in spirit and in truth, since such a view of the Godhead is to the highest degree materialistic. We have taken out from the "image of God" the material that we like and called it "the Godhead", while we judge the remaining material in this "image" to be "the work of the devil". It is not the Godhead we are worshipping here but a certain kind of material. Since it is only the material that is in our favour and that we particularly agree with, it is in reality only for the sake of our own pleasure that we worship this material, and this proves it to be a fact that it is in reality our own self or being that we are worshipping. This is further documented or confirmed as a fact through the circumstance that we become intolerant or indignant towards everyone who ventures to have even the slightest shadow of doubt about or deviation from our particular God or form of worship of God. This doubt, or this concept of God that differs from our own view, is a resistance against our obtaining our own favourite concept. In this case the intolerance is therefore merely our instinct of self-preservation fighting to defend something that is to us a vital necessity. We find ourselves in a kind of battle – not for the Godhead – but for a material that we particularly desire. We are waging a war that is rooted in exactly the same principle as any other war. Whether we call this war "holy wrath" or "righteous indignation" does not alter the principle. It is only the covering up or camouflaging with which we relieve a bad conscience or attempt to make our selfish war look like "worship of God". That this in many cases occurs unconsciously in ourselves makes this "worship of God" no less materialistic. It still cannot be described as a devotion to the Godhead "in spirit and in truth". It cannot be "in spirit" because it is a favouring of a specific created phenomenon, and "spirit" can be only the common material from which all created things come into being. And it cannot be "in truth" because it is selfish. It cannot be true worship of God as long as it is in reality exclusively a tolerance directed towards phenomena that are in our own favour, and an intolerance or persecution of fellow beings and things that do not fit into our favourite system or our worship of our own self.