Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Idols of the Day, Attachments of Now

Gerald May has shaped my thinking about idols.  His books which include Addiction and Grace and Will & Spirit have been game-changers for me. He asserts that God as God is not willing to become an object of our attachment or one of our idols.  We cannot become addicted to God as an idol the way we do other idols such as drugs, alcohol, sex, or power, or whatever.  We can, however, become attached to an image of God.  An image of God is not God. An image of God is an image of God. God is beyond our images.

Since we are humans, we seek out objects of our attachment. Our humanity is displayed. We are addicted. When we are attached to the object of our addiction, the entirety of ourselves changes, physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, cognitively, because we have found the fix for which we yearn, or at least that for which we think we yearn.

I sit in the midst of all manner of prophets. I read from the prophets of old, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and Micah, the major ones and the minor ones.  Those prophets who warned of impending doom when the people decided to follow their own way. Yes, the ones who said that Israel and Judah were about to fall. I also read about the prophets who prophesied that Trump would be the second coming of Cyrus, King of Persia, and that God would use this flawed human being to straighten out America, and maybe the world. Following in sync are the names we recognize: Graham, Dobson, Jeffress, Robertson, Perkins, White, Land, Copeland, Bachmann, and you can probably name others.

Biblical texts demand that we sort them out:  Isaiah and his diatribe about creating idols and then worshipping them; Moses’ demand that the children of Israel in their journey drink the idol that they created, and then Jesus of Nazareth’s admonition to love God with the heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.

We have created numerous idols or objects of our attachment from whom and from what we would be well served to abandon: American Nationalism, Trump as the Great Rescuer, white supremacy, money as the primary driving principle, Hilary and Barak to be hated, and immigrants as the enemy.  There are more. Any one of these idols is sufficient enough. The amalgamation of these idols is one of deep entrapment. We know we are in an idolatrous relationship with a person, idea, or thing, when in its presence we are safe and secure, and when we defend it against all reason. When information that is reasonable and when people of reason say to us, “Yes, but have you considered…….” and our instinctive dismissive is reminiscent of “I can stop drinking any time I wish, or I am not an alcoholic, or I am not addicted to whatever.”

We are inebriated at the power of our position, theology, politics, and the person and/or persons who symbolize that power. In doing so, we construct our own human-made idols and we marginalize other meaningful possibilities and those for whom Christ also died.

My prayer?  Very simple, “Lord, please release us from the bondage of our attachment to notions of power and to people and institutions that re-enforce those attachments. Free us to love one another as you have loved us.” 

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