If you put your ear to the ground, you can hear the sound of idols toppling across the land. 

In the past month, we’ve seen: 

• the Dow’s biggest fall in three decades 

• highest number of unemployment claims in US history

• the cancellation of all sporting events, including the Olympics

• schools, colleges, and businesses sending folks home and locking their doors

• bans on travel and gatherings preventing us from going on vacation and attending all forms of entertainment 

• churches closing their doors and going online

(All we need is for the internet to go down and everything that we depend on will be stripped away.)

While it’s easy for us to dismiss the concept of idolatry as something that happened in ancient times, it’s actually alive and kicking in 2020. Our hearts are made to worship. If we do not bow down to our creator, we bow down to the created. Idols can be people (esp. those who have power and influence like celebrities and billionaires), activities (entertainment and sporting events), or material objects (e.g., hand-held devices or fancy automobiles). Few of us intend to become idolaters and typically, the objects of our affection don’t become idols overnight. Our relationships with sports, money, food, sex, power, shopping, etc., start out quite innocently. We enjoy going to games or watching them on the TV. We discover we have some business acumen and find satisfaction in earning and saving money. We like leading people and get energized by our role. 

But then, over time, something shifts. Rather than being a way to relax and connect with friends, we pay more and more attention to our team and get increasingly cranky when they lose. Our weekend activities form around game times. When others don’t share our enthusiasm for a certain team, we write them off or despise them. (If you’re raising your eyebrows, you’ve obviously never been to a Red Sox-Yankees’ game.) Rather than growing to love the people we lead, we grow to love the power and influence we have over them and feel irritated when they thwart or slow down our plans. Maybe the IRA or stock portfolio never satisfies. There’s always, as the late John D. Rockefeller once said, the desire for “a little bit more.”

Part of the problem with idols is that they pull us off course slowly and at least at first, imperceptibly. Sometimes it happens so gradually that we don’t even notice. We can tell if we’re caught in an idol’s grip by paying attention to what we think about, what or whom we’re moving toward, and how we spend our time and money. If your first thought upon waking up is often how many likes did my FB post garner? or do I have enough time to check the stock market or log into Pornhub before I go to work?, you might want to give this some thought. Another indicator is how we respond when our access to the idol is threatened. Thank you Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick for providing us with a perfect example. 

During an interview about the economy with Fox News, Rep. Dan Patrick said, “No one reached out to me and asked me, as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your grandchildren. If that’s exchange, then I’m all in. … I don’t want the whole country to be sacrificed.” Translation: Grandparents should willing to go back to work and potentially die from COVID-19 so that our economy would not be jeopardized. If I understand Dan’s pseudo logic, the economy is worth more than human life.

As Patrick’s pronouncement revealed, idolatry corrupts us from the inside out. In Tell It Slant, author and theologian Eugene Peterson compares idolatry to a rogue virus (how apropos!):

Greed is a nearly invisible sin, a tiny parasite that makes its home into intestines of wealth. … In American, our astonishingly high standard of living and newly unlimited access to consumer goods, we are all vulnerable. We are rich. We have more than we need. The moment we are wealthy, whether in goods or in God, we are liable to greed. There is no avoiding this condition of wealth, whether we conceive it as a spiritual blessing from God or the material results of a capitalistic economy. And all the time the greed virus is in our bloodstream. Sometimes there are enough Scripture antibodies… to protect us against infection. But there are other times when our defenses are lowered and our whole system is fatigued. We get the fever and runny nose of greed. It isn’t long before we’re thinking about building a bigger barn.* 

Where we aim our inner compass affects everything. In the New Testament, Jesus puts it this way, “Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.” (Matthew 6:21) When we orient our hearts to God and love him above all other gods (Deuteronomy 5:7), our focus is outward, we want to love and serve others, and we become crazy generous. In comparison, idolatry makes us inherently self-centered, thwarts our ability to love and serve others, and makes us fearful hoarders. (I never thought toilet paper would expose this reality!)

Most of the roles, activities, or objects made by human hands out of wood and stone are not intrinsically evil nor do they have power over us in and of themselves. They gain control over us when we trust them and rely on them to satisfy us. That’s when we’re vulnerable to the promise of an idol. 

No choice that we make is ever neutral. Every alliance we forge, everything we choose to love moves us closer to or further away from the one true God. Meanwhile, our enemy endlessly schemes and plots how to separate us from God and from each other (see Adam and Eve in the Garden). Whether or not we’re aware of it, this is an ongoing, ever-present battle. The apostle Paul puts it this way: “We are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world and against evil spirits in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). We’re naive if we discount this. Just think about how quickly we can descend into addictive habits, self-deceit, sloth, or hoarding behaviors. None of us are immune from the pull of idolatry.

That’s why we need to pay attention in this season. When the idols topple, we can feel confused, angry, frustrated, agitated, and out of control. Those feelings can reveal where we’ve gone amiss.

The pivotal moment that we find ourselves in can break the idol’s spell. If we let it.

Hugh Palmer, vicar at All Souls Langham Place (England), articulated the disorientation that many of us have been feeling since COVID-19 transformed our world: “The little bubble that we’ve built for ourselves has somehow burst. The myth of self control has been shattered. Our gods are not as we imagined. They’re more fragile than we’d like to think.”

Now that their fragility and impotence has been exposed, we all have a choice to make. Will we gather the pieces of the fallen idols and attempt to put them back together? Or will we recognize where we have been bowing down to idol gods, forsake them, and reorient ourselves back toward God?

Make no mistake: this won’t be easy. But God offers us his companionship by way of the Holy Spirit and we also have the support of our faith communities. I hope and pray that our faith will grow stronger and that we will choose to love the Lord our God “with all our hearts, all our soul, and all our strength.” (Deut. 6:5) He deserves no less. 

Noteworthy: Fasting is one of the best ways to break any idolatrous habits or tendencies. Would you consider joining our church as we fast and pray for the next three days? It doesn’t have to be a total food fast. You could fast from social media, news, lunch, sugar, etc. 

Also, social distancing is tough for anyone in recovery. If that’s you, please reach out for support. Better to feel a little humiliation than to relapse. 

Good news: A group of professors at Cornell University put their 3D printers to use making protective gear for hospitals. Read more here. Many well known musicians are live-streaming concerts from their homes. Totally fun. 

Prediction: Since almost all salons and barber shops are closed, in three months, we’re going to see some of the most outrageous, creative hairstyles ever.

How are you faring? Send me updates from the field. And please, keep your distance.

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*Peterson is writing about greed, which is an outworking of a capitalistic culture where consuming has gone awry. The reference to building a bigger barn comes from the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12.