Subtle Idolatry

 I think I confuse people with God. To show you what I mean, here is a brief list of things I've wanted people to do:

• To know what I'm thinking before I have to say it.
  
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• To be strong enough and brave enough and good enough to sacrifice on my behalf.
  
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• To see beyond what I am to what I am destined to be, and to urge me to be the latter while encouraging me by noting the good they already see in the former.
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• To anticipate my needs.
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• To teach by word and example, and by oblique story more than direct preaching, because they know love reads between the lines in good ways and they want me to work harder at those ways.
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• To bowl me over with everyday kindness, and the sheer amazing fact of their willingness and eagerness to stay with me.
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• To love me with a love that never falters, and with a certainty that bolsters my unbelief.

I notice two things from this. 

1.  I am prone to look to people to fill needs only God can completely fill. 

2. I think an awful lot in terms of my needs.

These sorts of idolatry are hard to explain unless you're familiar with them. Worshipping giant statues? Okay. Wanting to have more and more possessions? Okay, we understand that pretty easily. But I'm only just growing into the idea that looking anywhere besides God for anything that comes ultimately from God is in itself idolatry. And it wasn't all that long ago that I thought God could practically be seen in my mirror.

God in the mirror? What am I talking about?

I think it is the most insidiously subtle form of idolatry: making God in our own image. To take the truth that only God knows our heart and to make that into a warm squishy companionable thing, instead of a an admittedly encouraging and comforting but also rather terrifying and humbling thing. To move from trying to fathom the depths of the mind of God to thinking we have thoroughly plumbed those depths. 

I did this when I was afflicted with depression. God became my ultimate advocate, in the way that Job seemed to mean. Not the advocate who would plead the right to sacrifice for the undeserving, but the advocate who has a mountain of evidence to draw from while defending his client. When I finally woke up to what I was doing, it terrified me so much that I'm still afraid to be really as deep-down solidly opinionated about important things as I was before. Because what I was doing was playing the "the God I believe in" card. You've heard it. "The God I believe in would say such and such." "The God I believe in is love, which means He'd never do this thing." "No God I would serve would say/do/be that." 

It's so easy to carve an idol out of your own heart. You don't even need a chisel.