Would the real Jesus please stand up?

“Then you turn your eyes to the fields and you find places where you see people that worship stones, rocks and sticks. You say, “Yes, those tribal people…” I’m talking about New Yorkers and Detrioters. Steel and wheels and tyres and green pieces of paper, diamonds and jewels and youth. Everything that does not last.“

-Paul Washer.

Oh snap.

The notion of idols is totally foreign to our society, people would want to say that we are past superstition and sage. The Enlightenment and the French Revolution were surely signs that society did not like authority to dictate how we should live and we should be structured. Yet, I notice that the idols that we see today are more disguised and hidden, which makes our struggle much more difficult than what the Israelites had to fight against. I read a quote once that said that the Devil finds it much more easier to trick people nowadays because no one believes in him.

One thing that I find personally to be an idol is success. It seems almost too obvious to become an idol. Society dictates that we are expected to go to college, we are expected to marry a wife, have sex and have 3 children and that we live in a suburban house with a small mortgage…society dictates how we should act and therefore, this is an idol too if it conflicts with what God has to say. Jonah chose not to follow what God had to say and instead chose to run away and followed the flow of society. God did eventually bring him back to His will, but the rebellion against God was present in the story.

“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—”yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.””As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” James 4:13-17 (English Standard Version)

I guess writing this, what an idol is anything that replaces God. A replacement for the joy that comes through God, taking what joy that comes through that we being saved from our sins and therefore infinitely joyful, replacing it with a cheaper alternative that does not require the same amount of sacrifice nor care. It is a symptom of a society that promotes rootlessness and promiscuity in every direction. If anything loses its appeal over a short period of time, as a consumer we can go to another substitute of equal joy. Since Christians exhibit such an anaemic faith with so little joy but more bondage to the Law, they do not know what great joy we have.

“Rejoice always,” 1 Thessalonians 5:16 (English Standard Version)

PS. …did you catch how I put a Eminem reference in the title? I thought that was pretty trippy.