My church has been engaged since last fall in going through The Story,  a chronologically arranged abridged version of the Bible, whose point is to give the reader familiarity with the grand sweep of God’s story in the history of the Old and New Testaments.   Just before the break for the Advent season, we hit the long didn’t-they-ever-learn, here-we-go-again, hundred-and-second-verse-same-as-the-first section:  Israel follows God.  Israel follows idols.  Israel follows God.  Israel follows idols.  Idols, bad.  Idols, good.  Idols, bad.  Idols, good.  Oy, ve!

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about idols – false gods – in the Christian context.  There are two aspects of idols I have been mulling over the most.  The first aspect is that of Identity.  The peoples of the ancient world identified themselves not only by who they were descended from, or by the king that ruled over them, but by which god they worshiped.  Hence, Israelites were not just “the descendants of the man Israel”, but were to be “the people of Yawheh”.  All that they did, said, and thought was to flow from that Identity.  When they followed after idols, they replaced their God-given Identity with a shallow substitute.  As Christians, our Identity is only to be found in our being “in Christ”.  When we take our identity from any other source, we allow an idol into the inner sanctuary of our soul. 

The second aspect of why idols have such a hold on people – on us – is that people believe their idols have the power to grant desires or the power to bring disaster.  Although we tend to think of worship as an act of love, as is our worship of God, when it comes to idols, this may not be the case.  Some people worship false gods merely as a “quid pro quo” in exchange for services to be rendered.  Many false gods are worshiped because people are afraid that if they DON’T appease the idol, terrible calamity will befall them.   Christians fall into this trap when they unconsciously credit anything in their life as having a greater power over the outcome of their life than God has.

What things besides being in Christ do we allow to define us?  For some, it’s the country named on our passport, or an ethnic heritage passed down through generations.  The moment we equate our denominational affiliation with our being in Christ, we’ve elevated it to an idol; Jesus doesn’t share His throne with anything, even if it wears ecclesiastical garb.  Sometimes it is a role in life that subtly warps our perspective.  Being a mother is an important role, but being a mother should never constitute a woman’s whole identity.  A man should take pride in his work, but he should not be so defined by his job that he wouldn’t even recognize himself without it.  Any of these things may provide legitimate secondary identities that enrich who we are, but none should ever supersede our identity in Christ.

How many of us tend to define ourselves by a single personal characteristic -most often, of course, what we see as a negative trait.  How many women see themselves only as a number on the scale?  How many teens believe they consist of nothing but their acne?  How many guys see nothing in the mirror but their expanding scalp?  Nothing in our physical appearance has the slightest thing to do with our Identity in Christ.  If we have a physical handicap, it is easy to see ourselves only through the lens of that disability, and if we have a chronic health condition or disease, it is all too easy to let that become who we are.  Those things will necessarily affect what we can do, and may dominate how we can live our life, but they are not who we are in Christ.  If, when we look at ourselves, we see first and foremost anything other than simply that “I am in Christ”, then what we see is an idol.

We may allow trauma in our past to become an idol, both by allowing it to define us and by ascribing to it a power greater than God’s.  For example, if we’ve been the victim of sexual abuse, we may try to hide it under a cloak of denial.  We may allow the abuse to define us in our own mind as “I’m dirty” or “I’m worthless”.  From there, we may decide that, being worthless, we may as well act that way, or we may try to be as ‘good’ as possible to “make up” for it.  All these courses of action stem from ascribing to those events the power to control our life.  If we’re honest, our fear is that if we open up and seek healing, those bad things from the past are going to destroy us and God won’t be able to fix us.  The truth is that the Truth sets us free.  The Truth is that there is no hurt – NO hurt – greater than God can heal, no past that He cannot redeem.  Only by seeing  ourselves in Christ as HE says we are, will we be able to strip that idol of its power over us.

Maybe we endlessly rehearse wrongs done against us, constantly polishing our “I’m a victim” badge.  (True confession time:  This is one of my personal weaknesses.)   This one doesn’t take big traumatic offences; we can use just about anything, real or perceived.  We focus on the sins done agin us, ignoring or diminishing the sins we done did, and deny the possibility of change.  “I was raised like this, so this is just the way I am (and will always be).” “I experienced XYZ pattern growing up, so this is just the way I look at things (and you can’t expect me to see things differently).”  “This happened to me, so I can’t [fill in the blank] – trust people, trust God, make friends (and I’ll never be able to).”   We allow the wrongs done against us to define us.  We give those wrongs the power to chain us in unforgiveness and bitterness , denying God’s power to make us new, to break patterns, to transform us.  We add another idol to the shrine.

Perhaps it is what WE have done that colors our perception of who we are.  I once read an evangelist who stated that a man with a sexually blemished past might be forgiven by God, and even used by God as a missionary, but such a man would never be good enough to marry into the evangelist’s family.  To the evangelist, the man would forever be identified as nothing more than his past sin.  Sadly, that evangelist is not alone in his thinking.  Too many of us Christians have this same distorted view of our past.  “My sins are just too big to be forgiven.”  “I have to ‘pay’ for my sin the rest of my life.”  “I’ll never be anything but a (crack-head, adulterer, abuser, liar, thief, whatever).”  We give shame the power to decide what God can or can’t do, making God into a liar.  Shame becomes so much our identity that we worry we wouldn’t even recognize ourselves without it.   

God gave us some great examples in Scripture of those who refused to give wrongs in their past that kind of power.   Joseph had plenty of wrongs done to him.  For the first part of his story, it seems like he “can’t win for losing”, as my dad would say.  Yet Joe did not allow the evils that befell him to define him, or to cause him to give up faith in God’s ability to work things out.  Had Joseph done so, he wouldn’t have been ready for the role God planned for him.  When his brothers came under his power, an “I’m the victim” Joseph would not have been ready to show them the kindness and mercy that the real Joseph did.  By not letting himself be chained to wrongs of the past, Joseph was free, though a slave, while his brothers, because of their unconfessed and unrepented-of sin, were slaves, though free.

Paul stood by at Stephen’s stoning and continued his career aspirations by persecuting the Church, men, women and children alike, before being confronted by the risen Lord.  If Paul had spent the rest of his life wallowing in guilt over the things he had done before becoming a believer, the New Testament would be a whole lot thinner!   Instead, Paul said “This thing I do:  forgetting what is behind, I press on toward the goal…”  Now obviously, Paul didn’t get some kind of amnesia so that those years just disappeared from his memory banks.  He just didn’t let those years define him.  When God told him that he was a new creation, he believed Him, and acted accordingly. 

Although every experience in our life will necessarily AFFECT us, it does not have to define us.  There is nothing – NOTHING – that God cannot forgive His children for doing or enable them to forgive others for doing, nothing He cannot cause to “work for the good of those that love Him.”  There is nothing in our lives that God cannot redeem.  God’s intent is to use EVERY experience in our life to conform us to the image of His Son.

Our Identity is in Christ.  Accept no substitutes!