Personal Reflection - Idolatry

The following is quoted from a blog post by Tony Reinke, which can be found at http://tonyreinke.com/2011/04/27/idolatry/

Timothy Keller writes the following in his book The Gospel in Life: Grace Changes Everything, Study Guide (Zondervan, 2010), page 40:

Why do we lie, or fail to love, or break our promises, or live selfishly? Of course, the general answer is “Because we are weak and sinful,” but the specific answer is that there is something besides Jesus Christ that we feel we must have to be happy, something that is more important to our heart than God, something that is enslaving our heart through inordinate desires. The key to change (and even to self-understanding) is therefore to identify the idols of the heart.”

After explaining the idolatry theme more closely from Romans 1:18–25, Galatians 4:8–9, and 1 John 5:21, Keller lists particular categories for personal reflection. The idol categories include the following:

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if…

• I have power and influence over others.” (Power Idolatry)
• I am loved and respected by _____.” (Approval Idolatry)
• I have this kind of pleasure experience, a particular quality of life.” (Comfort idolatry)
• I am able to get mastery over my life in the area of _____.” (Control idolatry)
• people are dependent on me and need me.” (Helping Idolatry)
• someone is there to protect me and keep me safe.” (Dependence idolatry)
• I am completely free from obligations or responsibilities to take care of someone.” (Independence idolatry)
• I am highly productive and getting a lot done.” (Work idolatry)
• I am being recognized for my accomplishments, and I am excelling in my work.” (Achievement idolatry)
• I have a certain level of wealth, financial freedom, and very nice possessions.” (Materialism idolatry)
• I am adhering to my religion’s moral codes and accomplished in its activities.” (Religion idolatry)
• this one person is in my life and happy to be there, and/or happy with me.” (Individual person idolatry)
• I feel I am totally independent of organized religion and am living by a self-made morality.” (Irreligion idolatry)
• my race and culture is ascendant and recognized as superior.” (Racial/cultural idolatry)
• a particular social grouping or professional grouping or other group lets me in.” (Inner ring idolatry)
• my children and/or my parents are happy and happy with me.” (Family idolatry)
• Mr. or Ms. “Right” is in love with me.” (Relationship Idolatry)
• I am hurting, in a problem; only then do I feel worthy of love or able to deal with guilt.” (Suffering idolatry)
• my political or social cause is making progress and ascending in influence or power.” (Ideology idolatry)
• I have a particular kind of look or body image.” (Image idolatry)

Then he looks more closely at the first four categories:

If you seek POWER (success, winning, influence)…

• Your greatest nightmare: Humiliation
• People around you often feel: Used
• Your problem emotion: Anger

If you seek APPROVAL (affirmation, love, relationships)…

• Your greatest nightmare: Rejection
• People around you often feel: Smothered
• Your problem emotion: Cowardice

If you seek COMFORT (privacy, lack of stress, freedom)…

• Your greatest nightmare: Stress, demands
• People around you often feel: Neglected
• Your problem emotion: Boredom

If you seek CONTROL (self-discipline, certainty, standards)…

• Your greatest nightmare: Uncertainty
• People around you often feel: Condemned
• Your problem emotion: Worry

Gospel-Centered Children’s Curriculum: Episode #213 (October 19, 2014)

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Gospel-Centered Children’s Curriculum: Episode #213 (October 19, 2014)

click this caption to hear this full episode

I always get a little nervous when someone brings up kids and all of the noble attempts to raise Christian children, kids who stay in the church.

First, my inferiority complex, my personal infirmity—the Lousy Mom Rash—flares. My skin gets red and itchy, and I wonder how in the world I will ever be able to do the right thing. I suck as a mom. I’m a second-rate Christian. I’m not even good at getting my girls riled up for Christmas and Easter. I mean, I can barely muster up the energy and pizzazz for Santa and the Easter Bunny, let alone Jesus and the resurrection.

Second, the stats aren’t so hot. Kids tend to grow up in the Church and get out. I’ve seen it so many times myself—children of awesome, God-fearing parents who are then burning down the doors to get out and away, ready to take on the seductive world with its glories and heartbreaks. I grew up in the church, too, and there have been both good and bad effects of this—most too personal to address here.

This episode, about The Gospel Project’s children’s curriculum often used for Sunday schools, featured Trevin Wax, the content editor of The Gospel Project. I would urge all parents, especially, to listen.

I think a pivotal moment in my own thinking happened to me this one time when I was in a car, headed to Payson for a women’s church retreat—of all places—talking to some women. I was closest to the driver, a real supermom and an undeniably fab example of a Christian woman, but I was friends with the other women too, though—in all honesty—my own departure from this church was on the horizon and I probably knew it then (albeit subconsciously).

Somehow or other, the conversation turned to that Mel Gibson film, The Passion of the Christ (2004). Some Christians hate it; some love it. But this one woman in the car said something that struck me.

We were not really close at all, this woman and I. A newlywed at the time, she was someone I knew of quite well, but I pretty much didn’t know her at all. A highly impersonal relationship. I knew about her Christian upbringing, her Christian homeschooling, her upstanding Christian behavior, the nice Christian boy she had married. And, on top of it, she was really quite beautiful. She probably still is, but I wouldn’t know it now.

On this car trip, though, she said that The Passion of the Christ moved her in a way she hadn’t been moved before—despite growing up in a Christian household, despite being enmeshed in an intellectual discourse about the existence of God.  The film did something unique to her; it touched her. Her experience of Christ on the cross had been, well, sterile. The visual, the drama, the physicality of the suffering—rendered in color film—did something different to her. What? Reached her heart? Made her tear up?

Look, I don’t want to diss the intellectuals. I am not an advocate of blind faith or faith without reason or a heart-centric, sentimental religion that rejects mindfulness. Not at all! Not one little bit! I do think we are, though, soul and body unities.

And, really, this moment lodged in my adult brain and it’s still there right now. How had the heart of this über pretty girl—pretty in that elfin, preternatural Hobbit way—been missed? How had the film of a possibly not-very-nice man touched her in a way that the Gospel previously had not?

As a mom, I paused. As an adult, I wondered, Where am I? Where’s my heart?

And, so, this episode. We want for our kids to have ears to hear, eyes to see, open hearts. I don’t think we’re wise to plow ahead without addressing what is age-appropriate; I don’t think it’s wise to push our adult understanding on children, often bulldozing our kids down, not noticing that their hearts are untouched. 

You know which stories of renegade church kids—kids who fled when they got legal—have haunted me? Stories about angry dads breaking Pearl Jam cassettes (I know, cassettes! I know, Pearl Jam!) and throwing them at bewildered and sad kids, the tape flying everywhere, like party streamers, ribbons unwinding, and the dads, practically exploding, shouting about the devil’s music, missing the lyrics: Son, she said, have I got a little story for you/What you thought was your daddy was nothin' but a...

Other stories haunt me about girls having sex and suffering contemporary public stonings. Instances of child molestation and porn. Simpler cases in which decent kids just went off to college and disappeared into the secular sunset. Frankly, I’ve heard a lot of stories about kids only too eager to kiss the God-talk goodbye.

Back to this episode. At one point, Wax says that the curriculum aims to focus on what Christ has done for the kids—not just on what the kids should do for Christ. Yeah, that sounds good, right? But do you know how critical that is? How crucial it is to step away from legalism, from a sterile understanding of doctrine that is only salvation-by-works in disguise? Oh, it’s so very important! Seriously, do you fully understand what happens to the psyche of a child caught up in a thinly disguised salvation-by-works theology? Do you understand the long-term effects of shame apart from grace?

In recent years, especially, I’ve been convicted of the need for an age-appropriate Gospel message for kids. I’m pro-Sunday School. I’m pro—no joke—arts & crafts and Bible stories and Christmas plays.  It’s not that I don’t want for my kids to be equipped for hardcore studies in the Book of Romans or the Westminster Confession of Faith. My hope is that these things are part and parcel of mending broken hearts, hearts broken and ready to be put back together again.

                                                                             REVIEWED BY RCC MEMBER JENNIFER BELL