Non-Catholic Christians look at my blog title and say “Aha! We knew it! You Catholics and all those statues.” But of course, I’m not talking about the practice of veneration of statues, which is supposed to be a way to remind us of the holy men and women who went before us.
You know, kind of like Nativity scenes
For Christians, the first commandment plainly sets the foundation of our faith - that there is only one God and nothing and no one should be given the place that belongs to Him alone. We pray it in the Creed, we happily recite the first commandment in Sunday School, and as Christians living in India, we are well aware that we do not worship idols in the way that many of our Hindu friends and neighbours do. Unlike the West, Indian Christians see actual idols as we walk down the street most days, but perhaps that makes us complacent about the first commandment, as if it has nothing to do with us. But idol worship can come in far more insidious ways.
Okay let’s get down to what the Church says about the first commandment.
Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God… power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, "You cannot serve God and mammon."… Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God. Human life finds its unity in the adoration of the one God. The commandment to worship the Lord alone integrates man and saves him from an endless disintegration. Idolatry is a perversion of man's innate religious sense. An idolater is someone who "transfers his indestructible notion of God to anything other than God.”CCC 2113 - 2114
This seems like a concept most of us can accept… until it challenges the way we choose to live our lives. How do we know when something has become an idol, when we have started placing our trust in something or someone other than God?
A couple of years I attended a retreat at a Carmelite retreat center and the priest talked a lot about one of the biggest obstacles to growth in prayer being unhealthy attachments. It was one of the most convicting retreats I’ve ever been to. But here are some of the things that helped me know when I was allowing some value or thing to crowd God out of my heart.
- When I start thinking or acting as if I MUST HAVE that thing in order to be happy
- When the thought of losing that thing fills me with disturbance and fear
- When I get angry or combative or defensive or anxious when someone tries to tell me I can’t have it
- When I don’t want to bring that thing or activity or desire to God because I’m afraid of what He’s going to tell me about it
- When I tell God ‘You can have everything, but not that thing.’
- When I make my decisions based on ensuring I have that thing, rather than on a true openness to the guidance of God
- When I spend more time thinking and talking and scheming about that thing than I do on seeking God or serving others
- When I’m not willing to ask my Christian leaders for their counsel and thoughts about that area
- Our plans: Okay, that is far from exclusive to India. Most of us have a plan for our lives. We ask God to bless the plan, we pray novenas so that it will all work out. But have we asked God if it’s HIS plan? When we don’t get it, are we resentful and angry with God? Are we open to a totally different plan if God leads us to it? It could be a plan to marry, to get into a particular educational course, to emigrate, and to have it all on a particular timeline. I remember one guy who was longing to get married saying, “I just KNOW that God wants me to be married, so I can’t be happy or satisfied until it happens.” Um, that’s not how God works.
- A particular person: This is very often the person we fall in love with, but it could be any other person who we have an unhealthy dependence on. If any person becomes more important to you than God, or whose presence in your life takes you away from God or His will for you, if you place your entire security and happiness and peace in the hands of another human being, you exchange the freedom of love for the insecurity and neediness of a dysfunctional relationship. Very often long drawn out unrequited love or infatuation is a sign that that a person has become an idol.
- Worldly success: I was recently chatting with some friends about how often the phrase ‘blessings’ has come to mean money, or financial success, as if that was the highest value or God’s greatest desire for us. We often act as if that is the central guiding principal for our lives, and anything that does not advance our success cannot be God’s will for us. Many people find the idea of taking a gap year to serve the poor or do mission work shocking and impractical because it could affect future career options. God may or may not have visible success as His plan for Your life. Set your hearts on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. Store up for yourselves treasure in heaven.
- Our comfort zones: We are ready to serve God , to do good, to help others… as long as it’s easy and comfortable to us, in a familiar place, in a language we know, and in a sanitized and very clear-cut structure. Sometime there are no easy answers, it’s dirty or weird or just plain unfamiliar, and it STILL could be God’s will for us. If we say NO just because something seems hard or uncomfortable, then guess what? Our comfort zone has become our idol.
- Our little luxuries: Most of us have certain luxuries that have become needs. It could be certain snacks or chocolates or alcohol or clothes or new shoes, things that are not BAD, but just a little expensive, and not necessary, but that we always make sure we have money for, and that we don’t always ask God his opinion on. ‘Of course I can help the poor, but I’m sure He wouldn’t ask me to give up THAT.’
- Our leisure time: This can become sacred, something we will fight to the death to protect. I’ve done my duty, I’ve been ‘on’ for a while, and this is MY time. No one and nothing has a right to take that away from me. Except you know, God does have that right. I remember one day I was on the formation team for our new volunteers, and it was the end of a long day. I was exhausted, and I remember thinking, “I’m done. Nothing more.” And then one of the girls I was mentoring came up to me and tremulously said, “Sue… do you have a moment to talk?” I was SO TEMPTED in that moment to say, “No, I’m tired. Let’s talk tomorrow.” After a brief internal struggle with the Lord, I said, “Sure. Let’s find a quiet place and talk.” It turned out she was going through some major struggles and that was exactly where God needed me to be at the end of that day.
- Social approval: ‘What will people say?’ This is such a deeply rooted value, something many of us have grown up with as a central motivating factor for our family decisions. But that has never been a priority to the saints who very often challenged the status quo, the cultural norms of each age in order to allow the light of the Gospel in more fully. To renew a culture from within we need prophets, people willing to hold up each aspect of a culture to the light of the Gospel, and throw out anything that does not glorify God, even if it means braving the disapproval of the world at large.
‘In the process of encountering the world's different cultures, the Church not only transmits her truths and values and renews cultures from within, but she also takes from the various cultures the positive elements already found in them. This is the obligatory path for evangelizers in presenting the Christian faith and making it part of a people's cultural heritage. Conversely, the various cultures, when refined and renewed in the light of the Gospel, can become true expressions of the one Christian faith.’ John Paul II, Ecclesia in Asia 21
- Family: Christians are all about the importance and value of family and familial relationships. And yet Jesus said some very controversial things about families including ‘Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me’ and many other such family-dividing kind of statements. Didn’t Jesus care about family unity? Of course He did, but precisely because family is so important, He knew exactly how easily it could turn into an idol. India, like Jewish culture of that time is a very family-oriented culture, which is both a potential strength and pitfall.
‘Once we make the decision to follow Jesus then every other claimant to supremacy must fall away. As I’ve argued many times before, every one of us has something or some set of values that we consider greatest. Perhaps it is money, material things, power, or the esteem of others. Perhaps it is your family, your kids, your wife, your husband. None of this is false, and none of these things are bad. But when you place any of them in the absolute center of gravity, things go awry. When you make any of them your ultimate or final good, your spiritual life goes haywire. When you attach yourself to any of them with an absolute tenacity, you will fall apart. Only when we make Christ the cornerstone of our lives are we truly ready for mission. Keep in mind that every encounter with God in the Bible conduces to mission, to being sent to do the work of the Lord. If we try to do this work while we are stuck to any number of attachments, we will fail. Period.’ Bishop Robert Barron
So how can we cast our idols down? How can we make God our center of gravity?
- If you haven’t done it already, ask God to be the center and Lord of your life. You actually have to make that choice and speak those words to Him. If you were baptized as a baby, your parents chose that for you, but you as an adult have to ratify your baptism. “Lord I want nothing more, nothing less, and nothing other than Your will for my life.”
- Pray EVERY DAY and bring EVERYTHING to Him. There is no aspect of your life God is not concerned with. It is often in the quiet of our prayer time that God is even able to point out our idols.
- If you notice something becoming too important to you, and bringing that disturbance in your heart, step back from it for a little while. Stop using the phone, get a dabba phone instead. Delete Facebook. Give away those shoes. Go on a snack fast.
- Be aware that God very often DOES ask us to do counter-cultural things, just to help us make a clearer and stronger choice to allow Him to be God, and sometimes to be a witness to the world that doesn’t even acknowledge that its idols ARE idols. Say yes when He invites you to do so even if no one else understands.
You know, like Bishop Barron says, none of these things are bad things. We DO need to make plans, to pursue careers, to love our families. Enjoying occasional luxuries or treats is not a sin. Our culture and community involvement can be a gift and a support. Leisure and rest is important. The danger is when good things take the place of God. When we allow God to be God, everything falls into place, and we are able to live life with more freedom and less fear. God wants to free us from our idols because they will never satisfy us, and they will never allow us to live fully the adventure God has planned for our lives. ‘For freedom Christ has set us free. Therefore stand firm, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.’ Galatians 5: 1
Related Reading
Save Us from Social Embarrassment
The Time I Went on a Five Day Silent Retreat
The Two Big Missing Pieces of Our Catholic Faith
The Lent Project #6 The Secret to Peace, Lent and Everything
Log Kya Kahege? (What Will People Say?) by Fr. Warner D'Souza
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