Not just a bad thing. Anything.

I like checklists, categories and formulas.

If you’ve been reading for any length of time, you already know this about me. In my life as a Christian, it’s tempting to reduce my relationship with Jesus to a set of behavioral checklists to satisfy. In my dialog with others, I see how many of us desire to know the ‘right’ way to act so our lives conform to the Christian image. In essence, we want a category to put things in so as to please God (or at least convey that appearance).

In reading the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20 of late, I was apprehended by the command against idolatry: 

“You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea.”
— Exodus 20:4 NLT

Idols are a ‘bad’ thing, right? From God’s perspective, they are a threat to our relationship with Him. Anything that separates us from Him is to our detriment. So that part is simple. Put them in the ‘Bad’ category.

If we’re digging (and we should be), it begs another question:

What things are idols?

The verse tells us idols are made of anything. Anything.

You and I, we don’t cut down trees and carve them into images to worship instead of God. We don’t pool our unworn gold jewelry to melt and mold for ourselves a ‘god’ to whom we would bow down.

We may do it differently than our Old Testament counterparts, but — make no mistake — we still do it. Idols are made of anything, remember? Try these on for size:

• High performance standards — at school or work — to achieve promotions or scholarships can impede our trust and reliance on God to provide for our needs. Work hard — as unto Him (Colossians 3:23) — but not at the expense of growing into deeper relationship with our Sustainer.
• Exercise, even in the name of health and caring for the temple of God (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), can all too easily become a distraction that actually keeps us from the Lord. Is it easier to wake early for exercise and omit the quiet time (even later in the day)? Perhaps praying on a long run is your daily communion with Him. Good. But is there still time to better acquaint yourself with Him through study and reading His Word?
• Appearance. Our (American, especially) preoccupation with youth, body image and clothing is proof positive that we’ve strayed far from a Biblical understanding of beauty (1 Peter 3:3-4). If our measure of our worth is driven more by cultural standards than the knowledge that we are His image bearers, it has become an idol.
• Even our marriages and children can become idols in our lives if we don’t purposefully  recognize Christ as reigning supreme with more than just lip-service and head-nodding. Wasn’t this part of God’s lesson to Abraham in the instruction to sacrifice his long-awaited, much beloved, promised-of-God son, Isaac (Genesis 22)?

These are just examples. Not categories or formulas with which to checklist our way to heaven. We each must test whether we’ve allowed something to sit on God’s Throne in our hearts in quiet conversation with Him. Our idols can be made of anything. Not just bad things. Anything.

We mustn’t let anything — even a good thing — come between us and the One Thing.