This whole pandemic situation has left me quite introspective and as normal life has been put on hold and the normal busyness of life has subsided in the wake of social-distancing and shelter-in-place, it has been easier to self examine. Initially, I was quite angry - angry at what I felt (and still feel) was hyperventilation and overreaction, but I couldn't stay in that mode for very long, so my initial feelings of anger subsided into something like acceptance. It's not an idle acceptance, but it is a realization that I cannot change much on my own, so I need to stop being so frustrated by it all. One side-effect of all of this though has been some rarefied mental clarity. I find myself able to think about the big picture of things much more clearly.
The other day, I started thinking about modern idols. Obviously most of us are not walking around making physical idols for ourselves, cast out of some precious material, as in the days of old. No, today's idols are much more subtle, but every bit as misguided. Here are three that I've come up with:
The Idol of Safety
There is no denying, especially now, that we live in a culture that is obsessed with 'safety'. My best evidence of this is the fact that in neighborhoods all across Illinois, they dug up the last square of sidewalk concrete at every intersection to install a "pad" with raised bumps on it in order to prevent people from slipping as they came to stop to wait for traffic to pass...at least I think that's what it intended for. Regardless, the financial cost of doing this had to be incredible while the incidence of injury or death that is saves has to be incalculably small.
The response to COVID-19 has also revealed just how much of an idol safety is. If this is a novel virus (meaning new) which there is no reason to doubt, then everyone is going to get it at some point. All of the social-distancing efforts and shelter-in-place orders were sold as a way to "slow the spread" or "save lives", when in fact, this is a stretch, at best. I see the benefit in not overwhelming hospitals, but this virus will kill exactly as many people as it will kill. That may seem like a tautology, but we do not have cures for viruses - and any vaccine that is developed will likely be fairly ineffective on a broad scale, just as the flu-vaccine is (typically 10-20% effectiveness). We can treat people with viruses, and that may indeed 'save' some small number of lives, but typically, the people who die from viruses are people with co-morbidities or the very old/very young. This virus has been no different - and once the "low-hanging fruit", as one scientist described it, have had the virus, death numbers will drop significantly as the virus encounters healthier people whose immune systems will prove quite formidable. But, I digress. My point is, you aren't any safer in your home than you are outside - and that is true whether you are talking about this virus, or regular daily life. If you get into a car, you aren't safe. If you're walking down the street, you are not safe - no matter what you do, there are hundreds of things that can kill you - maybe not immediately, but at some point. As the trite saying goes, the death-rate for humanity is 100%. Illness, accident, or evil, something is going to get you. A fear of death and suffering has led to making an idol out of safety - even if that idol is a complete mirage. At the end of the day, it's about control - convincing ourselves that if only we have enough control, we can stop bad things, perhaps even death itself, from happening. It's false. It's empty. It's an idol.
**great verse I thought of after the fact: Matthew 6:27, "Who of you by worrying, can add a single hour to his life?" (BSB)
The Idol of Open Options
I can't claim credit for this one - I first read about it a few months ago in a Gospel Coalition article - but since then, I have seen it over and over. Read the article if you want a full explanation, but in a nutshell, it is this idea that we love not having to commit to anything. The author of the article uses some fairly banal examples - replying 'maybe' to party invitations, always looking for better conversations than the one we're in, etc - but there are some very serious real-life ways in which this plays out, particularly in the life of someone following Messiah Jesus. For example - do we read the Bible and not take some of it's commands at face-value? Let's take 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 which reads, "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, not drunkards, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God." I used to read that and think to myself, "that cannot possibly mean what it says because I look at pornography every once in awhile and if I'm reading this right, it says that will disqualify me from entering the Kingdom of God" (Heaven). That was me, bowing down to the Idol of Open Options. It very clearly DOES say that people who don't obey what Jesus commanded WILL NOT enter with Him into his Kingdom...and yet my flesh didn't like that and so it sought another way, another option.
Jesus very clearly says, three times in John 14, "If you love me, you will keep My commandments" (verse 15), "whoever has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me" (verse 21) and "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. My father will love him, and we will come to him and make Our home with him" (verse 23). There is no "if you feel like it" or "if you keep them most of the time" - it's all or nothing. As Christians, we need to first count the cost (Luke 14:28), and then either decide to be 'all-in' or not in at all. There is no middle, there is no having your cake and eating it too. God's primary commandment is "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength." (Matt. 22:37) There is no alternative. "Having options" is false. It's empty. It's an idol.
The Idol of Community
This could alternatively be called "The Idol of Technology", but most of what our technology centers around today is having or building a sense of community, or connected-ness. I have talked with many parents who have older kids (middle and/or high-school) during this pandemic and they tell me that their kids are 'living' on their cell phones, desperately trying to stay in touch with their friends. I see it in adults too, we can't go out with each other right now, and so we've resorted to endless video calls and the like. Don't get me wrong, humans are relational creatures, and we were created to be in relationship with each other, but I think it has become idol-like in the way, and to the degree which we pursue relationship. I'm not railing so much on actual, messy, real-life relationship, but how we have become obsessed, with the advent of social media, with being 'in the know' about the lives of others without really being involved. There are two sides to this coin, hear me out:
The Observer - I confess, I fall into this category. For me, social media isn't so much about staying 'connected' as much as it is an easy, typically effort-free way of knowing what people are up to. There are many others (usually introverts) like me. I am easily exhausted with having to be "on" in-person, and social media allows me to not have to put forth actual real effort. I can be in touch with someone's life without really having to make much effort.
The Sharer - This is the type of person who uses social media as a means of deriving some kind of self-worth from sharing their lives on Instagram/Facebook/etc. They share the good moments, or they make moments look better than they actually are. This isn't necessarily intentional because, afterall, how lame would social media be if we shared a bunch of mediocre (or sad, bad, depressing) moments every day? But it can lead to a false sense of what life is really like, or it can mask the true feelings of the person sharing. Even more insidiously, the sharer can become dependent on "being seen" (likes, feedback, etc) by his or her community - which substitutes for real relationship. If they receive a lackluster response to something, they begin to feel depressed or less-than.
Some people are combinations of the two types, but those two categories seems to describe most people. Someone cynical once told me, "everyone you know is going to disappoint you at some point". It's true - no human-to-human relationship is flawless or perfect; people are always going to let us down. Either they won't do something we want them to, or they will do something we don't want them to do. When we put human relationships on an inappropriate level, we are substituting the value that God says He has given us and that we have in Him, for false value derived from the acceptance and love of others. It's false. It's empty. It's an idol.
I would love to hear from you if you can think of other modern idols. Some are fairly obvious - we in the West are professional idolaters of entertainment and escapism. I could probably write a book on that, with evidence from my own life. But what are some of the less obvious ones? Things that we perhaps even subconsciously bow down to? In 2 Corinthians 13, Paul calls the believers in Corinth to consistently examine themselves to see if they are "in the faith". In Romans 2, he says that believers should "not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the reviewing of [our] mind." Here is my encouragement to be in regular self-examination of what you are giving yourself to. As John Calvin once said, "The human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols."
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