What's On Your List?

Dear children, keep yourself from idols. - 1 John 5:21 (NIV) 

  

What are your idols?  

 

What do you give your time, energy, or homage to?  

 

Since a preacher shouldn’t ask any question she’s not willing to answer herself, here’s a (partial) list of my idols:  

• wanting to be liked; 

• not wanting to disappoint; 

• making sure everyone is happy. 

That’s only the beginning. I have other idols, most having to do with numbers. Church size. Dress size. Articles written. Articles published.  

 

What’s on your list?  

 

Perhaps John’s admonishment was only against statues of gold or silver. But the first Christians were people like us, so he might have been warning them about our kinds of idols, too. 

 

John’s words echo the wisdom of Rev. Dr. Reuben Sheares, one of the saints of the UCC. Years ago, preaching at my installation at the church I still serve, Sheares reminded the congregation (and its new pastor) why we come to church every Sunday. “All week long,” he said, “we’re seduced to worship all the little mini-gods of our lives. Sunday mornings, we come to remember the one true God.”  

 

Making a list of our idols is the first step. Turning them over to the real God is the next. “This is the boldness we have in God,” John affirmed in his letter, “that if we ask anything according to God’s will, God will hear us.” For, John concluded, “God is the true God and eternal life.”  

 

A footnote to the passage says, “Some ancient authorities add ‘Amen.’” I know Reuben Sheares would have.  

  

Prayer 

Help us, Lord, to be honest about our idols—the mini-gods that seduce us. Thank you for the people who remind us that You alone are the only One worth giving our lives to. Amen.