8 Even so, these persons aren’t excused.
9 After all, if they were indeed able to know so much that they could speculate about space and time, how is it that they weren’t able to discover the ruler of space and time more quickly?
10 How much more miserable, though, are those people who put their trust in things that are dead? These people call gods the works of human hands, objects of gold and silver that artisans practice on, artistic representations of animals, even worthless stones carved by someone long ago.
11 Imagine this. A woodcutter with some skill cuts down a pliable shrub. He carefully strips the outside covering of the plant and then, because he has some skill, shapes it into a tool for daily use.
12 Afterward he picks up the leftover bark that he had stripped away and uses it to cook a meal for himself. He eats his fill and
13 then picks up one of the leftover pieces of wood, one that wasn’t good for anything, a crooked hard piece with broken ends where the branches had been. Having nothing else to do, he takes this piece of wood and starts carving. By a process of trial and error, he’s finally able to give it a human shape,
14 or he fashions it into something that vaguely resembles some miserable creature. He covers it with red paint, giving it a rosy hue where the creature’s flesh is supposed to be. He covers over every flaw in the wood.