The Idols We Build For Ourselves

 This past week in the sermon, our pastor was speaking to a thought in James 1:  5-8:  

"If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him.  But let him as in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.  For that person must not supposed that a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, will receive anything from the Lord." (RSV)

The idea of doubt in these passages (from my pastor) in the Greek is nota lack of confidence, but a dividing of ourselves - in this case between God and the world.  When we "doubt" in the Greek, we are splitting our loyalty and commitment - thus when James speaks of asking in faith, it is that we are asking God to help us in how we serve and understand Him, not in worshipping the world.  

When we are double-minded, we ask God to help us worship something else.  And He is repelled by it.

How, my pastor suggested, do we overcome this kind of disloyalty.  By smashing the idol, the thing that we are worshipping instead.  He suggested asking the question:  "Where do I find value, comfort, and power?  Whatever that is, that is the idol."

I sat for a long time Sunday with that thought.  To be honest, I am still sitting with it.

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If I allow myself to ponder the idea of where I find value, comfort and power (outside of God) I find two sets of things, small and large.

The small ones are sorts of things that likely qualify as sins:  greed, lust, gluttony, laziness.  The sorts of things that have bedeviled me to the point that I scarcely think about them as idols - "It is a feature, not a bug" I say to myself as I confront my sin for the thousandth time.

It is not, of course.  It is a sin that needs to be dealt with.  But those are small idols; there are bigger ones.

My biggest:  The image of how I want to be perceived in life.

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In going through this round of the small group I am leading, I was able to go back and revisit my testimony (as much as it is one).  What became more clear as I edited it was how much I invest in images that I believe will make me feel competent, capable, successful, and beloved in the eyes of others.

Every persona or image I have sought to invest my life in - hopeless romantic, performer, Christian leader, entrepreneur, author, Christian leader (Round two), business executive, now wise leader - each and every one of these, at its core, is the elevation of me and my own life.  

Every time one of these personas failed me, I smoothly transitioned to another without missing a beat.  Every time, those thoughts and visions of "This is it.  This is who I am.  This is the way to me being seen as all the things I want (and believe) I should be seen as." influenced how I acted and interacted with others, and ultimately with God.

It is not that any of those things is necessarily bad.  But I sought to find my value, comfort, and power in them instead of God.  Therein lies the rub.

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I have tried, over the course of this week, to begin smashing that great idol:  confessing that it is an idol, finding those things in my life that enable those thoughts and removing them, working to abandon in small ways (bigger ones later) the behaviours and thoughts that enable them.

I asked God about what I was to do instead on my morning walks.  He spoke to me clearly in those questions:  Humble yourself.  Become a servant.  Be about My business and see what I will do in your life.

Honest to goodness, it feels like dying.  But perhaps this is the lesson that I need to be reminded of:  the true dying to self and rising up, filled no longer with myself but with Christ and Him crucified.