Laying Down Stones 3
Idol Stones
Deuteronomy 29:10-18
Our text is Moses’ great speech to the people of Israel as they prepared to forsake all other gods, all idols and trust only in Yahweh was delivered just before he left them to go up the mountain and die. You can almost hear his voice going up just a little higher than normal as he stresses the importance of what this commitment means to them. If you read on in the chapter the narrator even warns those who are thinking to themselves, “Oh, we’ll just pretend we’re going along with Moses but we won’t change anything we’re doing.” All sorts of curses, calamity, Sodom and Gomorrah are promised.
We could read these verses literally and come away with an understanding that basically says, “Either you do it my way or the highway.” That’s probably how a lot of people would read it. That understanding misses some subtle messages that are important for us to know about the purpose of blessing and curses. When we understand God to be the reality – the presence – that permeates our world with love and goodness, then we see that blessing is simply a by-product of receiving that presence. Curses, on the other hand, instead of being epithets that we fling at another to cause harm, are instead simply the reality when we don’t allow ourselves to move in the presence of God.
The ancients described this reality in terms of God being jealous and vengeful when people make mistakes. They were simply trying to describe their experience in ways that made sense to them.
Moses was telling his people that it was important for them to know where their grounding – their center – was. Did they place ultimate value in being in the presence and will of God or did they want to put their trust in something that would ultimately fail them?
Idols are much more formidable obstacles to our spiritual health than we often want to admit. It would be much easier if the only idols we had to battle were fashioned from stone or set on a hill. Instead, we struggle with much more insidious idols.
Idol – anything in which we place ultimate value that is not the presence of God.
The danger from placing value in things, people or situations that don’t deserve that trust is that these things, people or situations will ultimately let us down. We can turn something good into an idol by how we use it. Money is a good thing to have. If we make money our reason for existence, it becomes an idol. Relationships are good things to have. If we turn another person into the reason for living, or if we need to have another person as the ultimate value for our lives, then that relationship has become an idol.
Emotions can become idols. We can become so paralyzed by fear that it becomes the center of our lives and thereby an idol. Arrogance is the idol that healthy esteem morphs into when self or accomplishment or feeling superior become the center of our lives. Shame can be held onto for so long that it becomes the center of our lives.
What are your idols? To whom or to what have you given your trust only to have found that the idol didn’t deserve your trust? Name it. Hold it in your hand like your stone. Is that what you want to have ultimate value for you? If not, bring your stone to the altar and lay it down.
Sources:
http://www.luc.edu/faculty/pmoser/idolanon/BrightandDarkIdols.shtml