Everyone’s heard the old adage “you are what you eat”. We use it to scold our relationship with unhealthy foods, but quite frankly I think it has a lot more application to our spiritual appetites than anything else. Nowhere did that seem clearly to me recently than when I was reading through 2 Kings the other day.
This section of the Bible is quite frankly disheartening to read. It’s a merry-go-round of foolish human arrogance and it never pans out. The kings are following God, they get over inflated egos, they do their own thing, their sons do terrible things, the next generation turns back to God and tries to do right, another generation gets an inflated ego and the whole process starts over again. On and on it goes in its painful predictability.
And as this pattern goes on and on, devolving into horrific actions, the other makes a chilling remark about their lives:
“They worshiped worthless idols so they became worthless themselves.” (2 Kings 17:15)
Yikes.
What a horrible thought. But like always, I’m tempted to scoff and mutter “what a bunch of losers.” Before reading on, totally missing that this is just as much a problem with me now as it was with them then.
I am just as guilty of such a horrible mistake as the people of the Old Testament. How quickly do I get distracted into the sneaky, gradual slippery slope that is idolatry. We may think of idolatry as worshiping a statute of a god that doesn’t listen, but it’s so much simple than that. Our idols are anything we dedicate our hearts and minds to more than God.
And anything we idolize, we come to serve. It starts to own us whether we realize or acknowledge it at all. Worse still, it doesn’t need our permission or acknowledgment to own us.
We are what we worship. If you’re worshiping the content mill, you will become a slave to performative lifestyles. If you’re worshiping accomplishment and capability, you will become a slave to perfectionism. Even things that seem like we should give our everything to become twisted. If we worship our families we will become slaves to meeting their every wish to please them. If we worship doing good deeds, we become slaves to the idea of saving ourselves through work. The more we worship these things, the more they consume us.
At the end of the day, all other idols leave us hungry, empty, and frantic to keep them happy.
Then there’s God. Only worship of God provides security and identity that doesn’t take more than it gives. Worship of God places us in the hands of the only one who loves us perfectly and will never use us for his own gain. Worshiping him doesn’t make us a slave to performance and sacrifice, but offers freedom and safety.
It’s not an accident that God is called our Father. He wants children, not performing monkeys. With him, worship is a relationship, not a tax. God’s whole story is one of love and rescue, not one of disdainful expectation. Simply put, God is the only one we can safely worship without harm to ourselves. He’s it. He’s all. Everything else will turn us into something we’re not. God will instead turn us into the best version of ourselves.
So what will we worship? The things of the world that require sacrifice and performance? Or the God who wants us close to him? One offers an exhausting journey of insufficient effort. The other offers safety and relationship for no their reason than he simply loves us that much.
To me, that sounds like a God well worth worshiping.
Let’s find some joy,
A
Avalon Robinson Author 