They That Make Them Are Like Unto Them, and the Psalm Lists What Goes Missing

The thing he did not expect is what it has done to his hearing.

He can tell you when he noticed. His daughter said something at a table, something ordinary, and he answered her and the answer was fine and she accepted it and the conversation moved on.

And he understood, about an hour later, that he had not actually heard her. He had processed the shape of what she said and produced an appropriate response, and the whole exchange had happened somewhere out at the front of him without going in.

That has been happening for a while. He is fine in conversations. Nobody has complained. He can still do the whole thing.

What he cannot do is be reached, and he has slowly stopped noticing that he cannot, and the timeline of that lines up exactly with something else, which he does not want to write down.

There is a psalm that inventories what a made thing cannot do and then says one sentence about the man who made it.

The inventory

Here it is, in the King James Version:

Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not: They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not: They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat. (Psalm 115:4-7)

Read what the list actually contains. It is not a list of powers. It is a list of ordinary faculties.

Mouths, but they speak not. Eyes, but they see not. Ears, but they hear not.

The complaint is not that the object cannot do miracles. It is that it cannot participate. It has all the equipment for contact and none of the capacity, which is a precise description of the specific attraction of a made thing: it has the form of a person and cannot do any of the things a person does that cost you something.

And that is the appeal, and the psalm knows it. Something with a mouth that does not speak back is easier than something with a mouth.

You are not stupid for what drew you and you were never wrong that it was easier. Psalm 115:5 lists the faculties an object has the form of and cannot use, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a stronger will who deals with what a man went to it for.

The sentence about the maker

They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them. (Psalm 115:8)

They that make them are like unto them.

That is the whole warning and it is one line long, and it is not a curse. It is a description of a mechanism.

A man becomes like whatever he spends himself on. That is not a religious idea; it is observable in every field. And the thing about spending yourself on something that cannot answer is that the faculties you use to be answered stop being used, and a faculty that stops being used goes quiet.

Which means the man who is worried about his hearing at a kitchen table is not imagining it and it is not a coincidence. The psalm names it as the ordinary result.

So is every one that trusteth in them. And the second half widens it past the makers to anybody who leans on one.

You are seeing the mechanism accurately and you were never imagining what has happened to you. Psalm 115:8 says the makers become like the thing, and it is His Spirit who makes a hard sentence about a man's own condition survivable to read.

And if this has taken you somewhere heavier than worry, if it has reached not wanting to be here at all, that is not a thing to hold alone. A doctor, a counselor, somebody you trust who will pick up the phone. In the United States the 988 crisis line answers day and night. Nobody is asked to carry that by himself.

What the same psalm says God does

And now the turn, which is in the same psalm and is easy to miss because the inventory is so vivid.

The LORD hath been mindful of us: he will bless us; he will bless the house of Israel; he will bless the house of Aaron. (Psalm 115:12)

The LORD hath been mindful of us.

That is the exact opposite of the list. An object has ears and does not hear. God has been mindful, which is the word for holding somebody in attention, and the tense is perfect: it has been going on.

And the psalm opens with a line about who the glory belongs to and closes with the living blessing the LORD, so the whole structure is an object that cannot participate set against a God who has been paying attention the entire time.

Which is worth having for a man who has been talking to something that cannot answer. He has not been unheard. He has been talking in the wrong direction, and the hearing has been going on somewhere else the whole while.

You have been held in mind by somebody the whole time and you were never talking into nothing. Psalm 115:12 says the LORD hath been mindful of us in the perfect tense, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that attention something a man feels rather than concedes.

What He says about faculties that have gone quiet

And the promises about exactly the faculties the psalm listed, because the Bible keeps returning to them.

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26)

The stony heart. Stone is the material an idol is made of, and the promise is specifically that it gets removed and replaced with flesh, which is the material that feels things.

And Isaiah, on the same faculties, in the same order the psalm used:

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. (Isaiah 35:5)

Eyes and ears. The two the psalm named first.

And a scene in Mark where a man's sight comes back in two stages, which matters here:

After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. (Mark 8:25)

After that he put his hands again. Twice. The first touch was not the whole thing and Jesus was not surprised by that, and the man was not sent away for being a partial case.

You have faculties that God has promised to give back and you were never permanently deadened. Ezekiel 36:26 promises to take away the stony heart and Isaiah 35:5 names eyes and ears specifically, and it is His Spirit who is named in the very next verse of Ezekiel as the one who does it.