What's the Idol with You?

Click here to read Isaiah 44

Click here to read Isaiah 45

Click here to read Isaiah 46

The next three chapters have the theme of idols, making idols, the work of our human hands, and what happens when other gods take center stage in our lives.  Ever since the Ten Commandments, God was clear that no good can come from trying to craft idols for ourselves.  And the People of God found that incredibly meaningful...for about twelve chapters in Exodus.  Then, along comes the whole Golden Calf incident.  Moses was up on the mountain chatting with God...AGAIN.  And this time he was taking forever.  And there was no way the governing body of the church approved that much time off.  And so anxiety increased.  And Pastor Aaron, wanting to be helpful, said, "Let's make an idol."  Now to be fair, Aaron really thought he was making an idol to honor God.  It was not as though he was trying to start a new religion.  Rather, he just wanted to calm the people down.

That's the lure of idols in the world.  Here, buy this new ipad it will make you happy.  Here, buy this new television and impress your friends.  Here, buy this new outfit and wow everyone.  Andrew Root makes a compelling argument that so much of our identity today comes from what we buy and consume.  Years ago...my grandparent's generation...it was the family.  You lived closed to your parents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.  Family defined...and confined....your identity.  Around the 1950s, we became much more mobile and even nomadic...work and our profession began to provide our identity.  Watch Mad Men sometime to see how central work and who does the work is to the person's understanding of self.  But increasingly in the 1980s and 1990s, work ceased to provide that meaning.  So, people turned to what we can consume.  You don't like who you are or your identity?  It is just a swipe of a credit card away.  Family...work...stuff...all can be idols.

To be completely fair...family, work, and stuff can also connect us to God.  But there are limitations and we need to be careful.  I sense God when I laugh with my family.  I sense God when I talk with someone in my church.  I sense God on a spring day driving my car with the sunroof open.  It is not that these things are inherently bad or evil.  The problem with idols is not necessarily that it is a material thing.  It is just that at some point the idol will fail to point toward the deeper meaning and hence stop pointing to God.  All of the sudden, my kids do something that upsets me...or the church doesn't do what I think it should...or my car breaks down.  See what happens with idols?

In Exodus 32, the Calf incident...it was not so much that they made a calf or what the calf represented.  Rather, the calf could never fully reflect the mystery and unfolding nature of God.  Those three letters: G-O-D have so much depth and breath, and when we try to reduce that to something we can see, touch, or taste, we reduce the image of God.  And here is the real truth about idols: we also like to control them.  There is a reason why you have to vote on American Idol for your favorite and you want to control what they do.  I think one of the qualities of God that we don't talk about is that God is beyond our control...and yet God is intimately intertwined in our lives.  That is the tension!  That is the contradiction.  Idols reduce that tension and the creativity that comes from it.  Idols reduce the contradiction and can make us complacent.

We all craft and collect idols.  The point is not to eradicate them from our lives or to condemn others.  The point is to see an idol for what it is, not God...perhaps a way that can at times through the mystery and serendipity of God connect us to God, but that is not a guarantee.  This Lent, be aware of the idols in your life.  Name them for what they are.  And may you sense a trace of God's grace that can never be contained in anything other than the moving Spirit of God in our lives.

Blessings and peace!