10,000 Feet Somewhere Over the Pacific Ocean

Location: 34,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean
Time: Absolutely no idea other than I probably will regret not still being asleep. We’re about two-thirds of the way to Australia
Wow, I must have been exhausted. I don’t normally sleep on planes, but I crashed for about 4 hours after watching “Frost/Nixon”. Since then, I’ve been prepping for teaching Conflict Coaching.
Was thinking about Idols as I drifted off post “Frost/Nixon”. Specifically about how easy it is to takes something that is essentially good and by making it your god, make it a destructive force in your life and the lives of everyone around you. It’s so insidious – it gives you the ability to justify things to yourself that you would be horrified of if you did them because of a more obviously sinful motivation. When what you want if a good thing, it is easier to justify your actions as “achieving a greater good”, much like Nixon did. The ends come to justify the means. And that’s dangerous because idols demand sacrifice, as Ted likes to note. You begin by sacrificing those you don’t know and don’t care about. Over time, however, you begin to attack, to judge, to slowly (or not so slowly) destroy those you know and eventually, those you care about. Often, you will even sacrifice the very thing you love on the altar of your false idol. You see that sometimes where parents love their kids so much that their desire for their kids to have a good life leads them to destroy their children’s lives.
Okay, so how do you tie this thought into a nice little package? I don’t know that you can. It’s an observation. For Christians, the process involves coming to realize that you have gotten to the point where that good thing has become your god – the thing you fear, love and trust in beyond all else. You must recognize and acknowledge that this has happened. Then you must turn to God and seek his help in giving up this idol. Easy words to say, but impossible to do without God’s help.
I catch myself at this all the time. And it is so hard to overcome. Time and again, to paraphrase Paul, I find that the good I would do, I do not do. And the evil I would not do, I do. Oh what a wretched man I am. But Paul follows his meditation on his own sinful human nature by concluding “ Thanks be to God our Father through Jesus Christ our Lord”.Those sins, along with all of my other sins, are nailed to the Cross and I am forgiven. By his wounds, I am healed. So while I will sin again tomorrow – I will blow it. I will come to wants good things too much and make them my god. I will hurt the very people I want to benefit, I am forgiven and through that knowledge I have the strength to pick myself up, dust myself off and seek the forgiveness of any I have harmed. And then try once again. Thanks be indeed!
Soli Deo Gloria.