Idol Worship

I do a lot of Christian mediation work and I am always amazed at the number of idols in people's lives, including my own. The understanding that idols are alive and well today was a revelation. By "idols" I don't mean the big boys on Easter Island or the talent (or sometimes not) on American Idol, but things that we think we must have for our security, happiness, or success. The problem with idols is that they require sacrifice. What does this mean? In fact, there is a typical progression.

We all have desires and a lot of them are merely good or neutral. For example, the fact that I want a clean car is not a bad desire at all. When a desire ratchets up to a demand, though, is where the trouble begins. Using the clean car example, if I take my kids to McDonald's after a soccer game and one of them dumps a bag of french fries in the back seat, I have a choice - do I ream them out or do we have a chat and then they clean the back seat up after we get home, maybe with my help? If my choice was #1, you can be pretty sure that an idol is buried in my psyche somewhere. Idols come in a million disguises. Some common ones are power, success, financial security, social standing, professional standing. They can be as mundane as wanting the perfect house or yard and as "holy" as wanting to be a Super Christian. We are, in fact, idol factories and churn them out in endless numbers. If you find yourself getting unreasonably angry or anxious about something, you can be fairly sure that an idol is hanging around somewhere in the background.

When a desire has morphed into a demand, the next stages in the progression of an idol are judgment and then punishment. The judgment part is obvious - You have transgressed my idol! So is the punishment piece - You must be punished! We then proceed to sacrifice our relationship with that person or persons on the altar of our idol. Punishment can be yelling or not talking to someone for several days, the sleep-on-the-couch gambit, a frosty atmosphere and all sorts of other punishments- we are all very creative at punishments. This whole process can take place in a few seconds, often with the other person not knowing exactly what they did.  This latter phenomena is a really insidious progression that frequently happens with married couples and it goes like this: "If you really loved me you would know that this is important to me. You violated my idol, so you deserve double punishment for not knowing and not caring!" Not a two-fer that I recommend! In any event, if a couple (or your kids, friends, etc.) goes though this cycle often enough, the relationship is left in tatters or dies altogether.

An idol is really another name for a "god." There is a reason that the real God lists having no other gods before Him as the First Commandment and part of the rationale for it is set out above. He ended up sacrificing for us and not the other way around. The road to health personally and in relationships is becoming aware that idols exist in our lives and dealing with them before we start sacrificing those closest to us on their cold stone altars.