10 reasons why Christians keep erecting idols in their lives …

The Bible may not be the simplest of books, but it actually can be remarkably simple to understand.

That’s not to say there are not difficult passages to study through, but there’s much of scripture that is direct, clear, and concise. Take, for example, this instruction from the apostle John:

“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols,” 1 John 5:21 (NIV).

In a single sentence, John brings our attention around to the ancient human flaw of valuing others or things as greater than God. The apostle provides this warning because of the quiet but lethal destruction idols can cause, much like the affects of carbon monoxide in the body …

There is a special place in the cells of your body where oxygen is supposed to sit. It’s like a little slot that, chemically speaking, is shaped just perfectly to hold that atom of oxygen. The problem is that carbon monoxide is shaped almost identically to oxygen, so that it also fits perfectly in that slot where only oxygen should go. And when it starts to go there in mass quantities your body starts to suffocate.

However, you don’t realize this is happening. You think that you are fine. After all, you are breathing, your lungs are still expanding and contracting, you feel air coming in and going out. Your body is going through all the motions it should be going through. All systems are normal, right? Wrong. You are actually being asphyxiated. You are suffocating even though you don’t know it.

Spiritually speaking, this is what can happen when we put people or things in the wrong place in our lives, the place reserved only for God. The Old Testament records how Israel was guilty of cycles of idolatry. When reading about this, you would think the Israelites would finally learn the lesson that they should “keep themselves” from idols, but they continued to erect new ones and face terrible consequences for doing so.

We’re not very different from those ancient Israelites when it comes to continually erecting idols in our own lives. Even though the apostle John warns us to keep ourselves away from idols, there are at least 10 reasons why we continue to erect them:

1. We’ll continue to erect idols in our lives until God is our first and foremost love. Whether it’s the commands to have no other gods before God, or to not make any idols, or the “greatest commandment” to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, until we finally value and love God above all others and things, we’ll continue to prop up someone or something in His place.

2. We’ll continue to erect idols in our lives until we take the pursuit of holiness seriously. As long as holiness is unimportant or under-valued by us, and we don’t take the pursuit of personal holiness seriously, then we’ll allow others or things to desecrate our lives by taking God’s place.

3. We’ll continue to erect idols in our lives as long as being obedient to God is unimportant to us. If obedience is unimportant or inconsequential, we’ll think it doesn’t matter if we have an idol or two in our lives.

4. We’ll continue to erect idols in our lives when we persist in grieving the Holy Spirit and indulging the flesh. We lose our spiritual sight for seeing clearly, and any power for living rightly, when we grieve the Holy Spirit. By giving in to the desires of the flesh, we welcome idols into our lives.

5. We’ll continue to erect idols in our lives as long as we are unwilling to confess sin and unwilling to practice repentance of sin. To confess means to agree with God that we’ve sinned. As long as we’re too prideful or too stubborn to confess there is sin in our lives, we’ll never give God the place He alone deserves. And as long as we refuse to truly turn from our sin, we’ll keep bringing idols into our lives.

6. We’ll continue to erect idols in our lives as long as we’re content to live undiscipled and undisciplined lives. We consistently fall back into idolatry when we’re content with trying to live life undiscipled in the Word of God and the Way of Christ. A lack of discipline in discipleship makes persisting in idolatry easy.

7. We’ll continue to erect idols as long as we keep ourselves ignorant of God and distant from Him. Most professing Christians rarely read their Bibles outside of a church setting, and talking to God (prayer) is often limited to an insincere muttering before a meal or quick demands for needs. By keeping ourselves ignorant of who God is, and remaining relationally distant from Him, we’ll maintain a habit of allowing others or things to take His place.

8. We’ll continue to erect idols as long as we lack sincere worship of God. Worship literally means to ascribe worth or value to. When we don’t purposely, consciously, and conscientiously worship God as being above all, we’ll want to find something we think is.

9. We’ll continue to erect idols as long as we continue to think too highly of ourselves instead of humbling ourselves. It’s hard to think about giving God His rightful place in our lives when we’ve filled it with ourselves!

10. We’ll continue to erect idols as long as we seek security in someone or something other than God, instead of resting in Him. When we doubt the security and safety we can have in God by resting in Him, we’ll look for other ways to feel secure, leading us to erect more idols.

The apostle John’s exhortation to us is simple: “… keep yourselves from idols”! How are you doing with heeding his instruction?

Scotty