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What is an Idol?
What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.
A counterfeit god [idol] is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.
An idol has such a controlling position in your heart that you can spend most of your passion and energy, your emotional and financial resources, on it without a second thought.
The true god of your heart is what your thoughts effortlessly go to when there is nothing else demanding your attention. What do you enjoy daydreaming about? What occupies your mind when you have nothing else to think about?
Idolatry is not just a failure to obey God, it is a setting of the whole heart on something besides God.
When an idol gets a grip on your heart, it spins out a whole set of false definitions of success and failure and happiness and sadness. It redefines reality in terms of itself.
Idols cannot simply be removed. They must be replaced. If you only try to uproot them, they grow back; but they can be supplanted. By what? By God himself, of course. But by God we do not mean a general belief in his existence. Most people have that, yet their souls are riddled with idols. What we need is a living encounter with God.
Idolatry functions widely inside religious communities when doctrinal truth is elevated to the position of a false god. This occurs when people rely on the rightness of their doctrine for their standing with God rather than on God himself and his grace. It is a subtle but deadly mistake. The sign that you have slipped into this form of self-justification is that you become what the book of Proverbs calls a “scoffer.” Scoffers always show contempt and disdain for opponents rather than graciousness. This is a sign that they do not see themselves as sinners saved by grace. Instead, their trust in the rightness of their views makes them feel superior.
Perhaps, one’s image of an idol and idolatry is compliments of the epic movie, “The Ten Commandments,” starring Charlton Heston. It is pretty hard, at least it has always been for me, for anyone who has seen the clip to easily forget the image of Heston as Moses heaving the stone tablets, on which the Ten Commandments were “written by the finger of God,” into the golden calf, crafted by Moses’ brother Aaron, followed by the cleaving of the earth beneath the golden idol and the swallowing up of those hundreds of sinful Israelites who had worshiped their handmade “counterfeit god.”
If you are looking for a clear-cut, easy, “fast-food” definition of an idol, the golden calf is it.
If you are looking for a clear-cut, easy, “fast-food” punishment for idolatry, being swallowed by the earth and, apparently, being annihilated by the eternal fires of hell is it.
…simple, clear-cut identification of the sin and more-than appropriate, God-chosen and God-directed, final punishment as the consequence of that sin…
Oh, if sins could be identified and understood so easily and definitively. Perhaps, if we could identify and understand out sins so easily, we would be more willing to concritely ask God to forgive them.
Oh, if the punishment for our sins, the consequences for our actions — and there will be consequences for all our actions and all our thoughts — were more clearly recognizable and more immediate, we would, perhaps, be more willing to contritely ask God to forgive our sins in order to avoid the more-than appropriate, God-chosen and God-directed final punishment.
Today, if and when we are asked to identify “counterfeit gods [idols] that are so central and essential to our lives that, should we lose them, our lives would feel hardly worth living,” we would probably name those which are not only materialistic such as money, career, cars, and homes but also are those which are visible and tangible.
Rarely, would anyone think of “family” and doing any and everything because of and for the sake of that “family” as “an idol [maintaining] a grip on your heart [and spinning] out a whole set of false definitions of success and failure and happiness and sadness [and redefining] reality in terms of itself.”
But as far removed from the obvious golden calf and the worshiping of it, as I think we can get, is the idolatry discussed by Henri Nouwen in his famous book “The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Homecoming.” Many are familiar with the parable of the Prodigal Son as reiterated in Luke; and so with the knowledge that the younger son chose to disown his father by claiming and taking the inheritance due him, it is not difficult to identify self-centeredness as the younger brother’s idol. Thus, it is not difficult, upon reading and thinking about the parable for us, too, to realize that self-centeredness is a sin of idolatry of which we are more than capable and a sin of idolatry for which we must ask forgiveness.
What, for many, falls under the radar, however, is the behavior of the older son — the self-righteous behavior of the older brother; the self-righteous behavior that is not only directed at the younger and returning son, but is also and more destructively, for his own sake, directed at his father. As Jesus intended when He told the parable and as Nouwen clarifies in his book, the father is God and the idolatrous behavior is the older son’s behavior of self-righteousness directed at and attacking his father.
How often does our self-centeredness separate us dangerously far from the God, Who, because He is not, refuses to tolerate self-centeredness and expects us to live as unselfishly as did His Son Jesus?
But more frightening and disconcerting to me and as identified by Nouwen in his book, is the idolatrous sin of self-righteousness — “this occurs when people rely on the rightness of their doctrine for their standing with God rather than on God himself and his grace. It is a subtle but deadly mistake.” How many times have I sinned by being self-righteous? How many times have you? But the more important question, I believe, is how many times, have I committed the sin of self-righteousness without realizing that I was doing so? How many times have I made myself an idol and worshiped me, not God, because of my self-righteousness? How many times have you? And how many times would I have continued worshiping me if I had not read Nouwen’s book and become painfully aware of what I have done so unknowingly and what, at all costs, I never want to do again consciously?
How many people have never read Nouwen’s book? How many people are unaware of the sin of self-righteousness? How many people commit this sin constantly? How many people not only continue to hurt themselves but also foster disunity and upheaval in the church and hurt and pain for God’s ambassadors such as pastors, ministers, and priests because they commit the idolatrous sin of self-righteousness?
The idolatrous sin of self-righteousness is deceptive, insidious, and all-pervasive. To me and in my mind, it is the epitomy of the devil’s arrogance illustrative of his belief that he can destroy God’s relationship with His children, undermine the unity and effectiveness of God’s church, and disheartened and demoralize God’s pastors, ministers, and priests through the seed and sin of self-righteousness.
Fighting against self-righteousness is not easy. First comes the realization of the sin itself and the honest admitting that you commit the sin of self-righteousness not just occasionally but constantly. Second comes the total surrender to and “the standing on God Himself and His grace” to keep us from the temptation of and the committing of the sin of self-righteousness…and not once a day, not once a week, and not once a month but constantly, minute-by-minute. It takes us moving from the self-centeredness of believing that not only are we in control of everything and in control of our own lives and, therefore, can do everything to admitting that God is in control of any and everything, especially our lives, and that we can do nothing on our own and without Him. And third comes our choosing to ask Him to help us, confessing to Him that we cannot do it alone.
Out of love for my Father and because I know this is what He wants me to do, “I surrender all” to Him asking Him, as only He can, to keep me from the sin of self-righteousness. How about you?