I came across a new understanding of "idols" this morning--not completely new, just nuanced.  It was in the New Living Translation that my daughter uses.  John 5:21 says:

          "Little children, keep away from anything that might take God's place in your heart."

Both the King James Version and the New International Version translate that verse as "Keep away from idols."

If an idol is something that takes God's place in my heart then...

     by what standard am I judged?

     by what rules do I live?

    by what principles am I guided?

    by whom am I taught?

    by what am I guarded?

In the end, where am I safe?

Perhaps there is a clue to the importance of this right above this verse, in 1 John 5:19. 

    "We know we are children of God but the world around us is under the power and control of the Evil One."

I think this is what all that early Quaker talk about the "offices" of Christ is about.  Christ is our priest and our minister and our teacher and so on.  The Spirit serves these functions for us, present to us and to others through us, as it is present to others and to us through them.  (That's what the community is about--another way that God is manifested to us.  We cannot look to things other than that immanent Spirit for our guidance.)  Those things, things apart from that Spirit are of the world, of the flesh and not of the spirit.  Those things come to control us, they become the standards by which our lives are judged , the source of the rules we follow, the principles to which we look to guide our lives, the teachers to whom we look to make sense of our experience, the means to security, to means to guard ourselves.

All of this the world is pleased to do for us, all of this we are pleased to let the world do for us--because it claims to speak to our needs.  But in all of this there is really but one, Christ, the Living Spirit left with us, who can accomplish this in such a way that the result is life and not disappointed, bitter and alienated frustration.

To remove the mystical, present, conscious seeking of God and replace it with "common sense" or an understanding of "the way the world works" is to worship an idol.  We are misled when we think of idol worship as dancing around a statute.  Idol worship is taking place every time someone says "Well, no one will ever know..." or "If I don't take advantage of this person's vulnerability someone else will..."  It is not the flashy car that is the idol, or money.  It is not the car or the money we worship.  Rather, we worship (and fellowship with) the spirit that tells us--convinces us--that the car or the money will bring us happiness.  If that spirit, that idol, had not replaced God in our hearts, we would not be misled.

 

 

 

4:46:42 AM