Idols?

Idolatry. It is an offensive word isn’t it, as a Christian? That said even to an unbeliever the word would doubtless make them frown and tut ‘no, not me’. Idolatry is rife, rampant and in your life somewhere almost certainly. All your friends all your family, they have all had their idols.

Now it’s easy to think of idols as all being like the golden calf in Exodus, the one the Israelites went back to worshiping time and again when Moses wasn’t looking. We make noises of astonishment that the foolish Israelites just forgot all about God and went back to their pagan ways that they had inherited as their own during the 430 years they were in Egypt. Its easy to see how that happened to some degree, man being as easily tempted and persuaded as he is.

Immersed in a pagan culture, idols and idol worship at every turn, an entire civilisation (if that is a suitable word) geared towards worshiping that other than God, consequently the Israelites started to pick up and use (perhaps just out of cultural politeness at first) the Egyptians’ gods. Perhaps the idolatry crept into their lives and culture without them even realising. Practices and rituals they weren’t even conscious were coming between them and their true God. Others I am sure, jumped into such practices wholeheartedly in pursuit of carnal pleasures and lusts.

The Israelites ‘turned back’ to their gods in the wilderness, but I’d rather like to think they were ‘drawn’ or ‘tempted’ to those gods as they drifted away from God, as their faith weakened. When God is pre-eminent nothing should stand between the believer and the Lord, but the sideshow of carnality and idols that litter the path to Glory are sometimes tempting enough to draw us from the narrow path. We don’t always even recognise it for what it is. Satan dresses it up as ‘acceptable’ or a ‘one off’ maybe – that is when the carnal, idolatrous mind elbows its way back into the room and demands all the attention. Idolatry is self gratification of some sort. It is all about the ‘I’... me me me!

Look at the position the Israelites were in and translate it to your life. Can you see your idols? They’re hard to spot. Sometimes they’re, as my brother called them, ‘pet’ sins. Little idols which we think can’t hurt. Ones that are tucked away from the sight of others and indulged in secretly. Some on the other hand are huge. Enormous, all consuming idols which get treated like the elephant in the corner. It’s massive, it’s apparent; it takes up a lot of room. But no one has actually pointed it out and said “what’s that elephant doing there?!” We may pretend that it doesn’t exist and that it isn’t (figuratively) crushing our spiritual furnishings and eating our daily bread.

Go back to the Israelites again, tut if you like. Frown, judge, criticise and wonder at their God-less-ness. But before you do, think on this. Idolatry is inflating something, anything in its importance to the point where it comes before or instead of God. It needn't be consciously more important, just something which is an obsatcle to your relationship with Him to which you knowingly or willingly return.

I was an idolater. My idols over the last 20 years have been various sports, mostly rugby, my fitness, Saturday nights out, my diet, beer and more recently MMA (mixed martial arts) amongst many others. At the time they were ‘hole fillers’. Something to fill the void that needed to be plugged by God’s grace and love. But now I see them as my previous gods, my idols. Certainly the MMA and the commitments I made to that sport overlapped and crept into my Christian life and for a short while impeding my spiritual growth. Any interest or hobby or activity can be inflated into an idol. Satan will happily use ANY distraction to keep you from enjoying God.

Think. Football – the World Cup. How many Christians will miss church to watch a game? What other idols are there? Any sport can be. TV, the internet, the gym and one’s own body. Food, sex, pornography, booze, drugs, fashion, music and so on ad nauseum. Within those areas you can break the idols into ‘smaller’ ones. Would you miss training or Eastenders to go to the prayer meeting? Can you last a month without booze? Can you not visit a website or watch a film that maybe you shouldn’t?

We need to be watchful and mindful of anything we can create idols from. We also need to be aware of our former idols and how strongly they can call to us, drawing us back to our own spiritual Egypt. Satan would like nothing more than for us to brush away the conscience’s knee jerk regarding a mini-idol as insignificant.

If we allow Satan to win these minor skirmishes he gains ground in the spiritual war. Yes the battle is already won, but don’t allow yourself to become an unwitting casualty in the day to day trench warfare.

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image..."