An Idol for Every Man, Woman, and Child

Nearly universal to the creature of man is the absolute commitment to creating and worshipping idols.  And while sometimes it actually manifests itself in the form of what we recognize as an idol, a silly little statue of Buddha or our favorite musical artist, many times it is something more subtle and more dangerous.  With the Buddha idol and Billy Idol alike, it is much more likely that we come to recognize that we have placed our faith in an object that does little more than taking up space.  Given enough time, those most obvious idols in our lives will prove unworthy of our worship.  If we are paying attention, we will soon recognize that these objects are empty and offer us nothing more than false hope.  Unfortunately, this does not mean that we will raise our standards, but only that we will often times find a new idol, ones more pervasive and dangerous.  We must recognize this greater problem; that we create an idol every time that we place any purpose, object, or person above the One True God of the Bible.

I love my son tremendously.  When he was born and as he grew, I found myself loving him in ways I did not know before.  And yet, as I have grown in my walk with the Lord, I have realized that even my love for my son must be less than my love for the Lord.  To love my son more than the One True God, the God that created the universe and everything we see, the God that numbers the hairs on our heads, the sands on every beach, and every star in the sky; to love my son more than that God, would be to create an idol of my son.   It is within this context that we must understand the problem of our fallen nature to idolize, to worship the created rather than the creator.  Consider the real God of the Bible.  He created all that we see.  He created a universe so vast that there are more stars and planets in existence than sands on our beaches.  And yet, our God knows them by name.  Our God, for lack of a sophisticated way of saying it, is huge!  If we were to use anthropomorphic terms and were to call ourselves an ant, then He is so massively big that even His shoes would be unrecognizable to us, taller than even the largest of skyscrapers.  Although this language is inadequate, I believe you nonetheless get the picture.  There is only one being worthy of our worship.

It is for this reason that the One True God demands from us our worship and that when we find other objects to take the place of God in our worship, that it is an offence to Him — it is of this reality that the Bible speaks of when it calls God a jealous God.  And so my purpose in writing this post is to identify the many ways in which we make idols of items that are not God.  The key principle we must come to terms with is not something rigid and filled with rules and laws, but instead a concept applied quite easily to life.  Take for instance my relationship with my wife.  For my marriage to her to work I must prioritize it properly.  If at any point I begin to put lesser things above her in my priority list, making them more important than her, then I am communicating to her that she is not as important as those things (insert here any noun you want).  If I, however, honor that commitment to my wife by placing her in her rightful spot on the priority list, then I am going to make decisions conducive to building a loving relationship.  And so it brings me back to God.  God must always find Himself at the top of our priority list.  And when we find that He is not, we must repent and turn back to God.

My question to you is what are the idols in your life?  What items interfere with your worship of God?  What objects, pleasures, passions, or persons of a lesser nature do you elevate in your priority list above the great God of the universe?  It is vital that we evaluate our relationship with God in this light.  It is after all, an unfathomable privilege that we have that we get to be in a relationship with God; a God, mind you, that is not some empty statue, but a personal God whose nature is so utterly perfect that we would evaporate in His presence.  For God to allow us to worship Him so inadequately is amazing in itself.  And yet, I admit that I do not fully appreciate this myself.  I encourage you to take the time to think about God’s nature and allow it to raise the standard of worship that you find yourself in, worship that is not of the created things, but of the creator Himself.

Sheer Magnitude

For many years, throughout much of my life, I have been perplexed by those who saw such magnificence in God.  It seemed to me they were merely putting on a show for people to see.  I had no reason to believe that they really saw magnificence in God.  Sure, they had the knowledge of His greatness, but there is a difference between having the intellectual knowledge and having insight, having an actual glimpse of His glory.  It has only been in the last year that I have been able to realize what those men and women saw.  The more I’ve studied God, the more I’ve read the Bible, the more my prayer life has grown, the more I have seen that I have but only a whiff of His majesty.  It has almost been like God has been painting this glorious painting before my eyes, revealing ever so slightly bits and pieces of Himself; just enough that I don’t melt in his sheer magnitude.

And so it is that I write this post with the reality that it seems so many of my Christian brethren don’t see it — just as I once did not see it.  Of course, there are a couple of reasons for our lack of seeing God’s glory.  First and foremost, it is likely due to not being saved.  This would be the case for me in much of my teenage years, despite attending church.  However, there was also a point when I became saved when I was not fully aware of God’s glory.  I believe at that piont that it was merely a matter of time as God regenerated me.  But now, while I pray that God guards me from any hint of pride in such growth (as it comes through Him and not me), I also pray that he makes me keenly aware of those that deal in God’s work quite flippantly.  Some people just seem to hold God at arm’s length.  They seem to want just enough of Him to feel good, but not so much to actually come to worship Him.  And yet, it would seem that all we should do is worship Him.  All we should want is to know Him more fully, to see Him more clearly, and to sense His presence day by day.  I am only beginning to understand this, but I am seeing how utterly small I am and so while the flesh always tries to find something prideful to hang onto, the spirit prevents such nonsense by endeavering to show us in small doses the glory of God.

Discovering God: Does it matter which god?

In our present day, many people treat god as they do a grocery store. They bring along their little cart, they meander through the aisles browsing the selection, and then when they find an attribute of a god that they like, they throw it in the cart. Hey why not? It’s all about us, right? We should get what we can out of this god thing. When all is said and done, we end up with a wonderfully colorful hodgepodge of a god that makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But, is that a god that saves? Is that a god that will carry us into the next life? Or, is that merely a human idol made up by men to allow them to play the role of god?

An example of this picking and choosing is the common notion that god is an all-loving being that will send everyone to heaven. “Yeah, let me grab one of those wealth-giving attributes as well! And let me get one of those, one of these, and…wait, wait, not one of those! No, no, leave that sin and hell attribute on the shelf!” The truth is that the real God, the God that has revealed Himself in the Bible, is all-loving. However, it is equally true that He is a perfectly just God as well. Thus, God cannot act simply according to his loving nature, which I might add that we cannot fully understand, but He also must act in accordance with His just nature. God is the one that knows all of our actions and all of our thoughts. He is the one that determines the standard for those He accepts and those He rejects. Many people believe it is enough merely to be religious. God warns strongly against that type of person. He does not command us to be religious. He commands us to worship the One True God. And so this brings me to my overarching purpose in this article.

Many believe, in addition to their grocery-cart religious mentality, that any and all religious road leads to god. However, the truth is that there is only one road that leads to the One True God. It does in fact matter which God we put our faith in. To believe in any god other than the God of the Bible is to set one’s self up for an eternal shock in the form of hell. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and all other religions you can think of, will not save you from the wrath of God. Not only that, but even within the Christian religion, Jesus makes it clear that you cannot simply be religious. In Matthew 7, Jesus says:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”

You really have to think about that to understand the absolute exclusivity that is being communicated. Jesus is saying this to religious people. It is not enough to be religious. It is not enough to pick and choose which parts of God we want to believe in. God has revealed Himself in the Bible and we must come to the real God humbly in faith. Jesus has told us that only through Him can we be saved. We cannot go to one of those false gods, we cannot turn Jesus into Version 2.0 that meets our modern mindset, and we cannot be merely religious. Our hearts have to be changed by God. We have to die and be born again unto God. We have to repent of our sins and turn from them and turn to Jesus to save us. And we cannot simply believe in Jesus in a mechanical and religious way, we have to trust in him and make Him Lord over our life. While this type of message is unpopular in our day and age, it is as true today as it was the day He was resurrected two thousand years ago.