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An Idea Called Idolatry

You Get the Idea

When you work with words and ideas for a living like I do, you're often frustrated by the fact that some ideas just don't want to be made into an article. Such was the case for the very timely idea I had about New Year's resolutions and how all of us — Christian or heathen, black or white, rodent of some sort or lobster with rubberbanded claws about to be sold from a grocery store aquarium — have a desire to be made new, and how lots of the things we do are our feeble attempts to reconcile ourselves to Christ. Yeah, I know, it was a great idea. But very unexpectedly it turned to me, and said in the most gracious voice it could muster, "It's not you, it's me." Then it just kind of ran away. I saw no sense in chasing after it. Pure futility is what that would have been.

A short while later, another idea came bouncing into my head, wanting very much to be written. I kindly asked for its name. Plainly, and rather unassumingly, like a young child asking me to play, it said, "Idolatry." And I shuddered.

That's a topic I want (not) to write about as badly as you want (not) to read what I have to say about it. But as I said just a moment ago, sometimes we writer/editor types have less say over what ideas get to be written than we would prefer.

And so I write about idolatry.

Isaiah 44

I'll tell you what brought this idea to bear. I was sitting very comfortably in my chair recently, doing my devotions in the morning. I was reading a few chapters in the middle of Isaiah — Isaiah 44, in fact.

Parenthetically, I suggest you sit down sometime (or several sometimes, since the book is fairly lengthy) and read Isaiah. I love the picture it paints of how God allowed Israel to experience some very rough times, so He could show them He was the only thing that could truly satisfy them. Later on in the book Isaiah writes very poetically about soaring on wings like eagles, and how God will rescue and redeem Isreal. Beautiful, and quite applicable to our own lives.

So anyway, I was reading Isaiah 44. There, in verses nine through 20, Isaiah lays into the Israelites who fashioned gods and cast idols.

Now, I've always thought it very curious that the Israelites would be so — and may I be so bold as to say it — stupid that they would carve things out of wood or cast things out of molten metal, and then worship them. Isaiah definitely saw the inanity of it. In verse 19 he writes, "And no one recalls, nor is there knowledge or understanding to say [of a piece of wood], 'I have burned half of it in the fire, and also have baked bread over its coals. I roast meat and eat it. Then I make the rest of it into an abomination, I fall down before a block of wood'" (NASB). I would never worship some idol like that, I thought to myself as I read those verses.

But I felt the Holy Spirit urging me to read the passage again. "This time you're the one Isaiah's writing about," I sensed Him telling me. "You're the one fashioning the graven images. And all that stuff about idols — it's metaphor for all the things you trust in, consciously or otherwise, more than Me to make your life better."

I read again the whole bit about idols and meat roasting. But this time I realized it applied to me every bit as much as it applied to those Israelites. I, too, believe the lie that things other than God can truly fulfill me.

The Girl of My Dreams

Then God brought to mind a specific something.

I had been liking a certain girl. She's pretty. She's thoughtful. She's talented and smart. She's … well, basically I had myself convinced she was the girl of my dreams (and she may very well be, but that is neither here nor there, at this point). I had been liking her for a few months. But that morning, I thought back to when I started liking her. I realized it was quite soon after I had decided I was no longer going to spend my time liking another girl who, coincidentally, had replaced another girl that I had liked several years prior.

In my geography studies I learned to notice patterns. In fact, some might say pattern noticing is a geographer's greatest asset. Well, this geographer-by-training very astutely observed that for the majority of my female-liking life I have totally crushed on one girl, eventually become disillusioned about things, and then almost immediately started crushing on another girl. My mind has always wondered from young lady to young lady, idolizing each in their turn — and not in some benign American Idol, you're-pretty-and-you're-awesome-and-should-be-famous sort of way. No, I mean in the Isaiah 44, I'm-willing-to-believe-you'll-make-me-eternally-happy sort of way.

And really, it wasn't even about those girls at all. (Not that they weren't completely likeable; I do like to think I have good taste.) Instead, it's had everything to do with what I believe about God — that maybe He isn't trustworthy, that He probably won't provide for me.

Even I'm surprised at the lies I believe.

Willing Fools

I've heard it a few times, most recently during my phone conversation a few nights ago with a friend. And I've alluded to it here. This "it" I speak of is the idea that an idol is essentially a lie. Well, a combination of two lies, really: 1) that God is failing us in some capacity — that He's not who He says He is; and 2) that putting our hope in something else can pick up the slack.

The Israelites corporately decided, at various times throughout the Old Testament, that God was not who He told them He was. So they made idols out of wood and metal and worshipped them, like the pagan cultures that surrounded them. They maintained hope — deluded themselves, basically — that those things would bring them good fortune or happiness or something. And we guys do the same thing. Often, we find it hard to believe that God is trustworthy, so much so that we'd rather put our hope in other things, like a relationship — things that could never truly fulfill us the way God promises to.

Can I ask you a question? When you open your heart and allow it to be exposed for what it really is, what lie are you believing in? Money? Popularity? Good grades? Dreams of career success?

Or let me get a little more personal. Is it fooling around with your girlfriend? Or those pictures on the Internet you're pretty sure nobody knows you're looking at?

Return to Me

If that sounded a bit harsh (even I'm a bit surprised at my forthrightness), keep on reading Isaiah 44, like I did. Take a look at the part immediately after the part about all the idol fashioning. It's God, speaking a message of hope and redemption to Israel. When you read it, try replacing references to Jacob and Israel with your own name:

'Remember these things, O Jacob,
And Israel, for you are My servant;
I have formed you, you are My servant,
O Israel, for you will not be forgotten by Me.

'I have wiped your transgressions like a thick cloud,
And your sins like a heavy mist.
Return to me, for I have redeemed you'
(vv. 21-22).

God definitely won't stand for idolatry, of any kind. Sometimes He has to break us of all the lies we believe in. But He is always there, waiting for us: "… for you will not be forgotten by Me."

C O F F E E  S H O P

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No idol, molten or otherwise, can ever replace what God has for us. And really, God Himself is what He has for us. It's only in getting to know Him deeply and learning to trust Him completely that we will ever be truly fulfilled. Because God is trustworthy. He is who He says He is.