Where We Give Our Hearts--September 30, 2022

Where We Give Our Hearts--September 30, 2022

"Therefore, my beloved, flee from the worship of idols." [1 Corinthians 10:14]

The obvious ones are easy, honestly.

A golden calf, a statue of King Nebuchadnezzar that the Babylonian army forces people to worship, or even old Pharaoh claiming the power of the divine for his right to enslave people.  They're all false gods, and you know it pretty easily, because they overplay their hand.  They're just so obvious about it.  Those are the idols we have a sporting chance of knowing not to worship.  If there's an actual statue, or totem, or symbol they want you to give your heart and your allegiance to, you know something's fishy.

The trouble comes with the more subtle idols--the ones with just enough marks of the genuine article that it's harder to spot a counterfeit.  It's when someone takes the language, or name, or trappings of the real and living God and uses them dress up a faker, that's when it gets harder to know we've been suckered into give our hearts to a fraud.  It's what happens when we let the God we know in Jesus be co-opted and pirated to repackage something lesser--that's where we so easily get tripped up.  In fact, even in the original Golden Calf episode from ancient Israel's memory back in the book of Exodus, the way Aaron sells the golden statue is by selling everyone on the idea that this shiny cow is the same "god" that brought them out of Egypt.  It's got just enough veneer of the real living God--who actually did bring them out of Egypt through the Sea and out of Pharaoh's clutches--that the people lose their ability to distinguish between the invisible, intangible Yahweh and a statue made from their melted jewelry.  Once the people are told that this is the same God they've always known--just now in convenient portable statue form!--they're hooked, and they'll give their hearts and allegiance to the statue.  Aaron doesn't need to invent a new god to get the people bowing down--he just has to get the people's religious "brand loyalty," so to speak, while leaving the substance of the real God behind.

I think that's the thing that Paul is most worried about as well, too--not that the folks in Corinth will give up on Jesus for some newly invented deity, but rather that they'll get hoodwinked into following after some counterfeit version of what Jesus is all about.  Paul has already spent a whole chapter insisting that idols of other gods and goddesses aren't real anyway, since there is really only one God and only one Lord, Jesus, back in what we call chapter eight.  And back there Paul seemed to be echoing what his readers in Corinth already knew and understood--so I don't think he is worried as much that they'll go back to worshiping Zeus or Asherah or Apollo or what-have-you.  I do think he is worried that they'll fall for a counterfeit Christ, and some sloppy fake gospel that leaves us unchanged.  I think Paul is more worried about an idolatrous version of Christianity that doesn't reorient our hearts away from "Me-and-My-Group-First" thinking and toward the others-first way of life that actually looks like Christ.  I think Paul is worried about us confusing our safe, unchallenging mental pictures of Jesus with the real deal, who constantly surprises us, disarms us, redirects us, and moves us to tears with the depth of his love.  

And honestly, I think that's the bigger worry we face as Christians in this day and age.  It's not the danger that we'll pitch Jesus altogether in favor of some newly minted deity--I think ours is the day when we are tempted with counterfeit Christs who look and sound nothing like the authentic Jesus: the one who isn't interested in building an empire or setting up a "Christian" nation, but rather who reveals the Reign of God among the nobodies and the outcasts, the sinners, the failures, and the fools.  Surely ours isn't the only time in history that has been susceptible to that particular temptation: we've been doing it for most of the last two millennia, every time we confuse political power with the way of Jesus, every time we try and domesticate him to be our mascot or our genie to grant us prosperity and luxury, and every time we co-opt Jesus to endorse our pre-existing agendas and platforms.  Every time we ask Jesus to bless killing, to rationalize our greed, or to endorse the way of empire, we reveal we've got a counterfeit dressed up in Jesus' robes in our minds.  These are the truly powerful idols, because they come wrapped up in garb we think we recognize from the real Christ.  These are the most dangerous idols to be reckoned with, because they are the ones subtle enough to fool us, at least some of the time.

Today, my guess is that we don't have a strong pull to give our hearts to a statue of Pharaoh... or Nebuchadnezzar...  or even a golden calf.  But we do keep letting ourselves get bamboozled into falling for pretenders stamped with the name of Jesus.  Maybe today is a good day to point ourselves back to the real deal--the Love who first called us and whose name we still bear--so that we might learn again to recognize the genuine Jesus from the fakes we keep confusing him for.  Maybe it's a lifelong commitment to keep close to the real and living Jesus, so that we won't be fooled anymore to give our hearts to another lesser savior, and instead find ourselves held always by the real article.

Lord Jesus, keep showing yourself to us, so that we can be clear and grounded in you, amidst all the ways we fall for pretenders around us.