lifeasmission

Idolatry, Desire, & the Lion’s Roar

November 18, 2009

We interrupt this series to being you an important service announcement.

OK, not so much an important service announcement, but a few streams of thought have come together for me and I needed to get them down while I was thinking on them.

A few months ago I listened to a message on the gospel and idolatry.  The speaker was talking about how our living and proclaiming of the gospel always confronts the idols in our culture, the places we live, and of course, in our own lives.  How are we to give ourselves completely over to God and his mission in the world unless the things we love more than that are unmasked?

I think this is a helpful corrective for those who would define or even emphasize the gospel as social justice.  To the extent that local churches rightly strive to be a blessing to their communities and make a place for any and all, these ought always to be seen not as ends in and of themselves, but as a means of exposing idols on the road to full participation in the mission of God in the world.

A few weeks ago, listening to another message a different speaker had this to say…

What we want… has a massive control on what we can believe.  If you want something badly enough and believing the truth will take it away from you, you will see the truth as error and remain enslaved to your want.

This I think, is a helpful corrective to those churches who would spend the bulk of their time and energy trying to get people to believe the right things.  This is a dead end.  The real task of the Body of Christ is to live and love in such radical ways that the world yearns for a taste of it.  It is only then, when people “taste and see that the Lord is good,” that they may have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to obey all that God calls Good.

Currently, Amy and I are reading through The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.  Ashamed to admit it, I have never read them before.  We recently finished The Magician’s Nephew and I thought it was amazing.  I’m sure I’m not the only one, but one of my favorite part is when Aslan sings Narnia into existence.

The Lion was pacing to and fro about that empty land and singing his new song.  It was softer and more lilting than the song by which he had called up the stars and the sun; a gentle, rippling music.  And as he walked and sang, the valley grew green with grass.  It spread out from the Lion like a pool.  It ran up the sides of the little hills like a wave.

The connection between this and what I’ve written above comes when Lewis provides us with Uncle Andrew’s perspective…

It had not made all the same impression on him…  For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.  Ever since the animals had first appeared, Uncle Andrew had been shrinking further and further back into the thicket.  He watched them very hard of course; but he wasn’t really interested in seeing what they were doing, only in seeing whether they were going to make a rush at him…  he had disliked the song very much.  It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel… And the longer and more beautifully the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear noting but roaring.  Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you already are is that you very often succeed.  Uncle Andrew did.  He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song.  Soon he couldn’t have heard anything else even if he had wanted to.  And when at last the Lion spoke and said, ‘Narnia awake.’ he didn’t hear any words: he heard only a snarl.

If you’re not already seeing how these things come together, let me try and summarize.

What’s really wrong with humanity is that we want the wrong things – this is the result of sin.  When we think, speak, and act in ways contrary to how we were designed to think, speak, and act, we cultivate the wrong desires.  Subtly, silently, deceptively, those desires create idols in our lives.  There’s no shortage of options of what we might idolize; money, acceptance, friends, family, work, material possessions, even our cherished versions of truth.  When things like this get a grip on our hearts, it effects what we give ourselves to, what we love, what we worship.  And our worship of those things dulls our hearts and minds to competing desires. Thankfully, this cuts both ways.  The more we give ourselves to, love, and worship God, the less appealing the things of the world seem.

Posted in: church, gospel, idolatry