It is curious to most new millennium minds that the first and greatest commandment for both Judaism and Christianity is “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Deut.5:7) Jesus echoed this when He summed up all the laws and the prophets and incapsulated His own mission statement by saying, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all your heart, soul and mind and strength” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” (Deut. 6:5, Lev. 19:18)
The old word for what the commandments forbid is idolatry. Since we don’t live in a multi-deity culture, we tend to think we aren’t idolaters. Graven images, sun gods, moon goddesses, sacrifices to the Nile River, sacred cows: all these seem ridiculous to most religious American minds. “Of course, we worship the one true God! Idolatry was another time, another place, right?”
In His book, Addiction and Grace, Gerald May confronts our self-righteousness and calls it addiction, another word for idolatry. “‘Nothing,’ God says, ‘must be more important to you than I am. I am the Ultimate Value, by whom the value of all other things must be measured and in whom true love for all things must be found…’ It is addiction that keeps our love for God and neighbors incomplete. It is addiction that creates other gods for us. Because of our addictions, we will always be storing up treasure somewhere other than heaven, and these treasures will kidnap our hearts and souls and strength.”
We counter immediately, “I’ve never been addicted. I’ve never abused drugs. I’m not an alcoholic,” Yet in truth, attachments to things and relationships other than God Himself usher us unwittingly into “addictions that make idolaters of us all.”
Idolatry is the opposite of freedom. Jesus said, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36 LB) He, Himself, is personified truth. And anything that tugs us from Him—even so-called good things—can beguile and addict us. Anything that becomes our pleasure center, taking the place of God as our measuring-stick for joy, is addicting and idolatrous. Sadly, this loss of balance, this skewing of focus is capable of eventually destroying the very pleasure it seems at first to deliver.
No wonder Jesus said, “Anyone who loves his father, mother, children more than me is not worthy of me.” Such misplaced focus of our finest love will eventually latch itself on to its object and suck it dry, destroying it in the end. No husband, wife, child or friend is able to fulfill the deepest needs. No lover can complete the picture, be our “missing piece.” Only God is a source so infinite that our needs will not exhaust it. He is a source so boundless that out of it we can draw the love it takes to nurture all relationships and fill our own deepest longings at the same time. He is a source of love so boundless that from Him we can draw the love needed to nurture all our relationships and fill our own deepest longings from Him as well.
I have a habit of reading ads and listening to commercials. Ad agencies are pros at naming the deep spiritual needs we all share, then tying those needs to a promise of fulfillment by some product. What do we need? Acceptance? Happiness? Peace? A place to belong? Security? Love? To be valued? Things that promise to satisfy our longings are standing in line. Our economy runs on convincing us we can’t live without products that didn’t exist a decade ago, last year, last month!
Yet, we drive the cars, furnish our houses with the couch and easy chair, cover our floors with the carpet or hardwood, send our kids to the schools, wear the designer lines and the makeup, carry the leather briefcases and only grow more restless and empty.
Few of us would actually admit that we think products and artifacts could ever satisfy the hungers of the soul, yet Christians and non-Christians alike, find it nearly impossible to resist the beguiling promises of an “easy fix” and truly simplify our lives, refocus our affections and embrace unadulterated truth without fear or hesitation.
Sadly, instead of keeping God the measuring stick for all joy and pleasure, we all too often let our addictions become the measuring stick for God. We attach our spiritual hungers to the things we invent to express our worship—our style, modes of expression, theological systems, “aids” to worship, certain emotional or cerebral or artistic experiences connected with religion.
Some of us have fallen for the “high” we get from doing good, helping others, for being applauded one way or the other. Our “god” might be building churches, holding meetings, moving crowds, creating beautiful liturgy, evangelizing the neighborhood, feeding the poor. As good as these things are, they are not God, Himself.
No wonder Jesus said to those who scoffed at Mary as she “wasted” the precious perfume of her love at the feet of the Master: “She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you.” (Matt. 26:10b-11 NIV) He knew that helping the poor would naturally result from adoring Jesus, but when helping the poor becomes the focus, it would turn us into idolaters who have lost the joy of the journey with Him.
In the classic tales of King Arthur and his knights of the round table, Arthur begins with the search for the Holy Grail—the cup that his Lord had offered to his friends that night in the upper room. It would be a tangible reminder to Arthur and his knights to drink the cup of sacrifice and service, calling them to righteous living and noble deeds.
The search leads them into all kinds of adventures and conquests. In the process, the search for the grail becomes such an all-consuming quest that the dear Lord, Himself fades from view.
As good as these men aspire to be, as urgent as their search becomes, they lose sight of the face of Jesus and His hands that held the cup.
The book of Hosea the prophet is a call to us all who have ever gone off on our own adventures of misplaced affection. There is dear yearning in the voice of God that even rings through the warnings of destruction. Listen to the lover of our hearts: “I don’t want your sacrifices – I want your love; I don’t want your offerings—I want you to know me…. Oh Judah, for you there is a plentiful harvest of punishment waiting—and I wanted so to bless you!” (Hosea 6:6 –11 LB)
But what a merciful God we have! In spite of our unfaithful fickle hearts, His love calls us always back to the true center where we can find healing and wholeness. His resurrection has brought us the cup of joy.
