Tag: iDOLATRY
5 Counterfeit Gods: A Reflection from Julie Pfister
It’s Ash Wednesday, the day the Lenten season begins. Lent is a time when we imitate Jesus’ own time of testing in the wilderness by confronting the sin and idols in our own lives.
We will observe Lent this year by preaching on the themes in Tim Keller‘s book Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters. Some of you have insinuated my blog could use a ladies’ touch. Well, here to prove I’m responsive and always a good listener, to reflect on the book, I’ve asked Julie Pfister, one of the most authentic Christians I know, to blog her way through the book.
I have had them myself; stickers on my shiny new SUV (not new or shiny anymore) showing that my family was on its way. A few of the right schools, waiting and hoping for that empty spot on the back window to have just the right University stickered to it showing the world just how smart and perfect the little family that I had made was.
Like most of us, I didn’t realize it as it was happening. Pride, like any other idol can be insidious, and so difficult to spot. But my children, my seemingly perfect little family was on its way. I wanted room in my car to carry around the whole hockey team. I wanted my kids to want to have their friends come to my home where I could serve up the milk and cookies.
They did for a while. Then, things started to awry. As Keller put it, its not that I loved my children too much, I just didn’t have any room left in my heart or time in my schedule (or theirs) for God. I wanted my children to be happy, successful, loving and to love me! Perhaps it is partly because of the culture I grew up in that the desire for the perfect little family was so important. Having happy, successful, smart, athletic, caring, loving children would validate me as a person – especially since I had quit my job and “sacrificed” (oh please) my career to raise my kids.
Like any false idol, it didn’t take long for the cracks in my perfect little life to really start to show. My children and family are a wonderful gift and precious blessing to me, but I learned a long time ago, what Keller reminded us, that until or unless we stop trying to map out perfect little lives for our children, and trust God to be their God in the inevitably bumpy and even tragic path that HE has for them, we will be brought to our knees.
Do we pray that they will be Humble, shunning the world and the trappings of success and searching for God? How do we view others children who go off the chosen accepted cultural track…high school, college, graduate degree, career, family, Do we think that there is something wrong if our children “choose” a different path? Are we not quick to give a qualifying response when we tell someone that our son or daughter is not in college? How honest can we be with each other when people ask how we are? How is Sally….Can we really just honestly pray that they will know God? Will we or they be ok if we pray that God will use them, that they will seek God and God will seek them…..if that means that they go against the cultural norms? How can we as parents hope that God will break our children’s hearts so they can be desperate for HIM. Do we trust God enough to want that sort of brokenness for them? What if we pray that our children KNOW God? Do we trust him with the pieces of their broken hearts? Do we trust Him to ???? It is so counter-intuitive for me as a mother for my children to want to feel the emptiness and desperation that I have felt. Do I want my children in the pit of despair?
That same pit that Christ reached down and pulled me out of and set my feet on firm ground and put a new song in my heart! I loved teaching at the Day School. With each new class I always felt a twinge of envy along with the joy of meeting the bright and shiny precious, babies and the hopeful, loving parents that brought them. I wondered how they might feel if their child called them something horrible and told them they hated them.
I hoped and prayed that their child would never get beaten to within an inch of his life or disappear for days and weeks at a time. I wanted to go all Isaiah on them and belt out….Get on your knees NOW and study and learn all that you can….not from Dr. Spock but from the Author of their Life….the Ultimate Educator….so that you are as ready and STEEPED in God and His Word that “when the rest of life unravels” He and his Word will be such a part of your fabric that you will not.
Some people still tell me, hoping to not offend, that I used to remind them of Barbie….Unless I missed the happily broken, God fearing, Grace loving, sinner Barbie, there is no resemblance.
0 America and Its Guns
I’ve had James Atwood’s book, America and Its Guns: A Theological Expose, in queue for a few years, never getting around to it.
The Sandy Hook shooting and resultant debate has prompted me to read it. I can only image the sorts of response I’ll get for even posting anything about guns.Nonetheless, from a Christian perspective at least, guns are not just a legal, constitutional or political issue.
Any object designed to take human life is also inherently a theological issue too.
The line between patriotism and idolatry, Atwood warns, can be a fine one when it comes guns.
I’ve just started Atwood’s book. Here’s Scot McKnight‘s summary from a few years ago when the book came out:
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James Atwood admits he has been waiting for 36 years, but that wait (for all of us who have been waiting) is now over: Atwood himself wrote the book. What’s he been waiting for? After he buried one Herb Hunter who was killed by a reckless use of an easily-purchased handgun, he’s been waiting for someone to write a book that theologically reflects on guns in America.
30,000 gun deaths per year in the USA. 30,000. More than the population of the village in which we live. Wiped off the map every year. 30,000.
Where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths. Guns are designed to kill.
In 2008, 17 in Finland, 35 in Australia, 39 in England and Wales, 60 in Spain, 194 in Germany, 200 in Canada, and 9484 were killed by guns in the USA.
Atwood, who owns a gun and is a deer hunter, was asked about five years ago to speak to the Presbyterian Peacemaking Forum about guns and gospel values and idolatry, and that book is called America and Its Guns: A Theological Exposé. Atwood is more than a concerned pastor; Atwood has been involved with The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence for 36 years. He’s read all the materials; knows the evidence; has been active in the discussion and social struggle; and he has given us a gift.
What we need is a balance between the right to bear arms and the right to live in safety.
For change to occur, Atwood observes, requires “the leadership of an educated, spiritually aware, and committed community” (xvi). The Gun Empire, he claims, has a stranglehold on America. He sees gun violence as the elephant in the room no one wants to look at or talk about. He thinks the stranglehold is about the “principalities and powers” and are nourished by death.
It is not God’s will that 82 to 84 people die every day as a result of gun violence.
The nonsense of the Gun Empire is that guns don’t kill people and that the answer to gun violence is more guns.
Atwood thinks his previous strategies — through the federal government and legal process to create better laws — didn’t work because he was too naive about the NRA’s use of funds to guide legislators. He thinks now that the way forward in gun violence and the way forward against the Gun Empire is to motivate and mobilize the church, the community of faith, to act on its faith.
Here is how he says it:
On the moral high ground, with confidence in the rightness of our cause, with indisputable facts at our disposal, and with strong biblical and spiritual resources, people of faith will be able to convince those in Congress and in statehouses to vote for fair and balanced laws that they know in their hearts is the right thing to do.
You can read more about the book at the Jesus Creed blog.