Idols

It's about more than just bowing to statues

I started last year with a lot of questions about my faith. 

Well, questions is a nice way to put it. They were more like defiant objections. Finally finding a community of believers meant I had questions about how I should live. I felt like I was at the rodeo riding the biggest baddest bull I could find. But all my questions boiled down to “Can I do this? Do I have to do that? Can I keep listening to heavy metal? People don’t seem to like this stuff, how am I going to answer their questions?” “Can I do stuff on sundays? We used to always sit around and not use any screens whatsoever. Is that how it’s supposed to be?”I know some of these sound silly, but we tend to default to what we grew up with. Sometimes we don’t take the time to ask enough “why’s” (and sometimes we are simply met with “because I said so!”) 

I did some funny things in rebellion of my upbringing. I had a few people tell me pokemon was devil worship, so I wore my pikachu hat to church every sunday. It made me chuckle every week. Then I added on my jack skellington sweater, and got a few people’s attention. It was fun. Then I would come home and play video games all of sunday. As time went on, however, I started to find deeper and deeper issues. Issues that I had to really chew on, because no answer seemed obviously right to me. Eventually I snapped and had to start debating these topics in my head. I turned to the bible to try to find counter-arguments to some of the claims people were making, and I came up short. It seemed like a lot of issues were pretty clear and that made me mad. But I started to realize I was less angry about being proven wrong, and more mad about how everyone who was right treated me. In other words, yes, we have right and wrong; but these aren’t tools to bash people over the head with. Right and wrong are meant to guide us and help us lead healthy, meaningful lives. I wanted to find a middle ground in which we have grace for those who are wrong, but that we don’t forget that wrong exists in the first place. 

After a big fight with God in my own head, here’s what I arrived at: am I willing to go where the King sends me? Even if it doesn’t make sense, even if it isn’t where you wanted to go, are you willing to make the journey? God came to me and said “look at all these things you are hoarding. Would you truly rather hoard all these things than come follow me?” That’s what shifted my perspective of right and wrong. It became less about “things I can get away with when I argue from the bible,” and more “things I would hide away from God if he told me to give up for Him.” I pictured myself like a child holding a toy. If the King reached out to have it, would I give it to Him, or would I snap away and say “no! That’s mine!” Any time I get that second response, I now pause and try to rework my priorities. 

I’m not saying this is an easy thing to do, but this has become my litmus test for my development with God, and how I have shaped my walk with Him. I no longer see my moral decisions like I see the law. I’m no longer asking if going 6 above the speed limit instead of 5 will get me a ticket, I’m asking if I should be going 45 down this narrow back road at all! It’s a great way to break out of legalism, because it transcends the black-and-white nature of the law. Sometimes, God says “no” to a good thing because it isn’t your time for it yet. Sometimes a good thing is a bad thing when given at the wrong time. Christianity is all about attitudes, not rules. Although rules have their place, they are one of many weapons in our arsenal of faith, to be wielded wisely. That is the way of the King.

That’s  something that I got tripped up on for a while: a “good” thing at the wrong time, and for the wrong reason, can still be a bad thing. Mark 2-3 demonstrates this well. For context, the sabbath is a day of rest. There were rules put in place so that people could have a day to recharge and get their strength back for the following week. It was a chill-out day. Now, I’m sympathetic to the importance of taking these things seriously. If God took the time to lay it out specifically, we should take heed to follow it. However, this good thing of rest becomes a sin when we become rigid, and treat it like the only thing that matters. You see, in this passage, Jesus heals a man’s hand on the sabbath. Healing was one of the things people weren’t supposed to do on the sabbath. But Jesus did, saying it’s better to do good than to do evil. 

I interpret this to my earlier point: it’s less about the specifics of what you do, as much as the intent with which you do them, and the willingness you have to do them. If God told me to give up meat til the day I died, I’d do it. Is there something wrong with meat? Of course not! But do I believe God has a good reason to give me such a difficult order? Yup! Beyond a shadow of a doubt! 

And yet, I have found something peculiar happen when I lay everything down on the altar. A lot of times, stuff comes back! Not only do things come back, but they come back even better! When we live within God’s context, life tastes sweeter. If you’ve never tried this, here’s my favorite example. Try going a week without soda. If you’re feeling brave, make it a month! Then, after a month, have one. It becomes the greatest thing in the world! Is it because you did anything differently? Did they magically change the formula during your time off? Nah, it’s because you treated it like a “sometimes” thing, instead of an “every day” thing. 

It can be hard to shift your perspective, I get it. If you’re anything like me, sometimes you may think to yourself “I just don’t get it, this seems perfectly fine to me.” I’ve had those moments. When I do, I remind myself that yes, this thing is perfectly fine, but the King said no, and I take orders from the King. There’s a time and place to understand things, but not from a place of arrogance and defiance. I’m not in charge, and I most certainly am not the wisest being in the cosmos. 

It’s funny, we’re in this spot where we are seeing that our ways don’t work, but we don’t want to change them. Everyone wants change, but nobody wants to change. Because, deep down, we don’t want to give up the one thing we think is most precious: our thrones. We all want to play king over our own lives. We want to feel like we are in charge. We want things to go our way. But our way isn’t always the best option out there, and we need to humble ourselves to see that.Sometimes, we just aren’t as great as we think we are.

My prayer for you is that your perspective begins to shift today. That you may begin to take your first steps towards seeing that your way isn’t always the best way. I pray you search yourself, and work on what you aren’t willing to give up. Because, whether you believe in God or not, this issue will come up at some point. And if you aren’t willing to give everything for a cause, you’ll keep yourself, but you’ll lose a lot in the process. 

Till next we meet

May Peace be With You