Give me your idol

(Reprinted from Sept. 18)

When Jesus encountered a young seeker along the road one day, one whom the Bible identifies as being both “rich” and a person of authority, a “ruler,” he met a person who had great potential and a sincere desire to please God. The young man wanted to do what was right and apparently, he already had enough faith in Jesus to humble himself before him and ask for directions on how to accomplish it!

“As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”

“Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”

Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.”

 (Mark 16:17-22)

After hearing his question and knowing the heart behind it, Jesus does a shocking thing, he asks the young man for his idol. Jesus knows exactly what is keeping him from becoming an intimate follower. But notice, before he asks him, the scripture tells us that “Jesus looked at him… and loved him!” Jesus’ great love for this man compels him to asks for the thing that is coming between them, but the man could not let it go.

Jesus doesn’t accuse him, condemn him, or “guilt trip” him into laying down his idol - and that’s really what we are talking about here, a subtle, almost invisible idolatry. Jesus asks for his idol in love. Often our self-strategies are not, on their face, “sinful” by our legalistic letter-of-the-law definitions. This man had great wealth. Having great wealth is not patently sinful. God gave Abraham great wealth! Success is not sinful, hard work is not sinful, being loved and admired by others is not sinful. With our various theologies of Christian liberty, we can make a case for a lot of things “not being sinful” and satisfactorily justify why we hang on to them. Paul acknowledges that fact, but then gives us something else to think about.

"Everything is permissible for me"--but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me"--but I will not be mastered by anything.” (1Cor. 6:12)

The problem is craving our idol so much that when Jesus looks at us with loving eyes and asks us to give it to him, we walk away from Jesus sad because we don’t trust that he can, or that he will take care of us - at least not as well as we have taken care of ourselves with our cherished idol-strategies. Every “self-strategy” starts and ends with me. I take care of me. I soothe me. I exalt me. I punish me. I am my own personal alpha and omega. I am my god.

While the rich young ruler was confident that he had kept all the commandments since his youth, Jesus shows him that for all of his outward appearances of obedience, he is living a life of continually breaking the very first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me” by holding on to his beloved idol!

A precious day-care teacher who spent her days wrangling preschoolers related a story once about “idols” from her experience. One day after teaching a lesson on the ten commandments and doing her best to explain the fairly difficult concept of idolatry to pre-school kids, one small boy who continually played with a plastic super-hero action figure, approached her sheepishly with a question.

“Ma’am,” he said as he held up his favorite toy, “Is this an idol?”

I can tell you if that little boy had asked me that question, I would have quickly said,

“No, honey that’s just a toy, it’s fine!”

But to this perceptive teacher’s credit, she didn’t answer quite so fast.

“I honestly don’t know.” she mused, “Let me think about it and pray about it, and I’ll tell you what I think tomorrow.”

That night she prayed about it and studied scripture, wanting to give the young lad a proper answer. The next day she took him aside and gave him a profound description of idolatry. She asked him to hand her his plastic hero, and holding it respectfully she said,

“This is a wonderful toy you have and I know you love it! Jesus loves to watch you enjoy this toy … and enjoy everything he has made for us! Every good thing comes from God! But this thing is like everything else on the earth. It’s not an idol… unless we make it an idol.”

Puzzled, the boy asked, “How would I make it an idol?”

“Well,” she said slowly, “If we make anything more important than God, then we’ve made that thing into an idol. If Jesus asked you to throw it away …. could you?”

 Sadly, the small boy wondered aloud, “Will Jesus ask me to throw it away?”

His teacher answered thoughtfully, “I don’t think Jesus will, but he might ask you to share it with somebody for a while, or he might ask you to put it aside for a time so you could focus on doing something important he asked of you, or he might have something even better to give you if you were willing to let go of it! But if Jesus asked you to throw it away…, could you? If you couldn’t, then it might be an idol.”

That powerful conversation between a wise teacher and an inquisitive pre-school boy mirrors the conversation that the Holy Spirit, our divine teacher, has with our hearts when He says to us, "Give me your idol."

“Jesus looked at me and loved me. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Give me your idol…. Then come, follow me!”

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