A Labyrinthine Journey: Soon Coming in 3-D

As I was preparing for preaching today on James 3-4, I found myself noting some modern-day idols that it is easy for us to fall into. But first the text:

Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where these is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. (James 3:13-16, NRSV)

Sadly, I have to say that it looks like today we are living out this upside-down wisdom that is born of death and leads to dying. We take pieces of the truth and focus on them out of proportion to balanced wisdom.

This state of being out of balance goes both ways. I think we can idolize something by either over-blowing its importance or by undervaluing its necessity for an integrated life. For example, if we consider the Great Commandment to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength we can see that balance God desires for us as an integration of all parts of our created being to be worthy of praising and serving God.

When we actively idolize the intellect, we throw the whole scheme out of balance and project the idea that it is only through the intellect that we properly serve God. Thus we set people up for failure if they are not scholarly to think they are worthless to God. On the other hand, we cannot live out an allergy to the intellect. That form of reverse idolatry is the same obsession with the mind, but in different colors. There we are tempted to degrade and deny part of the good creation of God by denying that it is possible to use our intellect for God’s glory. So we must avoid the idol of intellectualism and it’s obverse, anti-intellectualism.

Another idol is success. OK, I know I am talking heresy now in our mega-church, mega-burger, mega-war, mega-whatever society. Yet, haven’t we allowed our desire for success to overshadow the fruits of wisdom in James? We are willing to do and say anything in order to be successful in what WE think God’s wants us to look like. I serve two small churches and we have struggled with how to grow and how to be successful. We look at programs that guarantee us success for the kingdom. I get email and junk mail for training events that will help our church to succeed in reaching out to any generation name you can think of. We have even tried a few things, but in the years I have been here and the many years before when others have tried programs, the situation remains the same. Lately, I have been wondering if we have made the mistake of defining success for the church on our terms (meaning in the terms of our success-obsessed society) instead of listening to God’s desires for us. Does God love us less because we aren’t “Big” and “successful?” Can God love us more if we were those things? I believe the answer to both of those questions is No. So how have we gotten stuck making an idol of success and allowing that to interfere with our living out the love of God in Christ and in us?

The last one I scratched on my text processing page is the idolatry of the short-term. Everything must have immediate gratification for us. One of my struggles with prayer have been the dry times. I have times when in the time for prayer, I sense the presence of God. And my prayers become easier and joyous. Then prayer will be dry. No sense of the Holy. No fluttering of angel wings. No quickening of the heart, or flow of God-energy. So my short-term eyes think something is wrong. I wonder if I have erred in my technique, or have offended God. I have caught myself seeking the idol of my feelings about God rather then the true presence of the God who decides how to make the Divine Presence known.

This is a faith journey. How can I pray without the eyes seeing God’s presence? The same way I pray when God chooses to gift me with that sense: humbly, with gratitude, and faithfulness. I was sharing this with my spiritual director and he said that sometimes prayer is like working the reception desk at a business. You must put in the time because you do not know when you will be needed. And as you give God the time and space to come to you, you will be ready when that gift comes. Maybe this is what waiting with expectation is all about. Sitting in prayer knowing that while we do not sense God’s presence, we know and believe that God is just as present with us when we are dry as when we are dancing in the rain. God has Eternity Eyes. There is no short-term bias with God. When it is time, it is time. We must be careful not to allow our idolatry of instant gratification close our hearts to the wisdom of God’s eternal perspective.