Idolatry

February 20, 2019

Word got to me about 11:00 last night of a fire on Park St in Sinclairville. The person who contacted me had heard it over the scanner and thought it was my son’s house. It was the house across the street; a passer-by saw the flames and had our daughter in law call it in (our son was still in New York City on a mission trip). The call coming from their home, it went out as their place burning. Thankfully, the disabled man living there was safely evacuated, but the house looks to be a complete loss.

People in small communities have a way of taking care of one another. By next morning, word had already spread about needing clothing and other items for the victim of the fire. I drove by this morning and noticed his big plastic nativity still on the front porch, survivors like himself, and I wondered about what in that home was precious to him. What gift handed down from father to son, what memento of grandparents, siblings, or children? Ordinary items that adorn our walls, sit tucked away in drawers, or laid up in boxes in a closet; things that have little intrinsic value but are priceless to the owner—what memories went up in flames last night?

This physical world matters. God created it, pronounced it good, and charges us with taking care of it. The objective reality of it is the foundation for Western civilization, scientific research, and most of the societal blessings we have. But there is an inherent danger lurking in it: idolatry.

The biblical injunction against idolatry has many facets. Our God refuses to be squeezed into human categories, and so condemns depictions of him because they can never begin to approach his majesty. He is always diminished by visual representation. Then there is our tendency to substitute things we can touch and see for the spiritual realities of our faith. We make an image, revere it, and end up becoming like it. If that doesn’t make sense to you, you haven’t seen the pornographic carvings on Hindu temples and witnessed the degradation of women that emanates from them. The same can be said for the pornography that plagues our generation. The things we make can make us. The things we possess can end up possessing us. So I wonder...what possesses me? I live in a modest, but comfortable home. Our home is filled with mementos of family going back four generations or more; pictures, furniture, knick-knacks. I have machinery, instruments, tools—all things that make my life enjoyable and comfortable. So if I lost them in a fire, how much of myself would be lost with them? I don’t know the answer to that question, and hope I never have to find out. 

I am grateful for the spiritual and relational blessings I have. I am also grateful for the tangible blessings, and hope to be able to keep my distance from them just enough so they don’t become my masters. It is an uneasy truce, and the battle lines are finely drawn and constantly patrolled. There is only one God and Lord, and none of the things I own have the right to claim authority over me. It is up to me to make sure I don’t voluntarily offer myself to them, and to instead insist that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. I am grateful tonight that he is Lord. May he always be Lord to me.