{"id":792,"date":"2015-05-04T02:19:24","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T09:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/?p=792"},"modified":"2015-05-04T02:19:24","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T09:19:24","slug":"idolatry-staring-at-your-own-finger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/2015\/05\/idolatry-staring-at-your-own-finger\/","title":{"rendered":"Idolatry: Staring at Your Own Finger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"How<\/a>A month or so ago I was trying to put Samuel (one and a half) to bed and he was being a complete goofball: swaying from side to side, dancing in circles, and cycling through all his animal sounds in rapid succession. As I lay there on his bed, my primary thought was, \u201cUgh \u2013 do I have time to go get my phone to film this? It\u2019s too dark anyway. Shoot! This would be PERFECT to share on Facebook.\u201d After several minutes agonising over how I might be able to record this \u2013 all the while only half paying attention to Samuel \u2013 I came to my senses and realised I should probably just engage with my son and enjoy his innocent expression of silliness. At the time I didn\u2019t have a word for my temporary obsession with capturing and sharing the moment, but I think I might now: idolatry.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reading Rod Dreher\u2019s excellent new book, How Dante Can Save Your Life<\/em><\/a>, which I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago<\/a>. In the book Rod recounts how he\u2019d found himself in a \u201cdark wood\u201d of bitterness and resentment when he moved to his childhood home expecting reconciliation with his family and found that the same problems remained as had always been there. In this dark wood he stumbled across Dante\u2019s Divine Comedy<\/em>, which he credits (along with his priest and his therapist) for bringing him back into the light. One of the key moments for Rod came in reading about the hell of idolaters in the Inferno<\/em> and realising that he had made an idol out of family and place.<\/p>\n

In simplest term, idolatry is preferring an image of a thing to the thing itself. Ultimately, that means preferring anything to God, since the ultimate purpose of everything good is to serve as an image and vessel for God\u2019s love; in Swedenborgian terms, \u201cthe universe in its greatest and least elements and in its first and last elements is so full of Divine love and wisdom that it can be said to be Divine love and wisdom in an image\u201d (Divine Love and Wisdom<\/em> \u00a752<\/a>). What Rod discovered was that he had mistakenly been seeing family as an end in itself, rather than an \u201cicon,\u201d an imperfect image of God\u2019s perfect love. From the book:<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t simply that I saw family, place, and religion as idols \u2013 that is, as ends in themselves \u2013 but that my distorted vision prevented me from seeing them as they really were: as icons, damaged though they may be, through which the light of God shone. They were not ends, but imperfect means to the perfect end: God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anything can be an idol, because we can make anything an\u00a0end in\u00a0itself \u2013 food, friendship, family, etc. \u2013 rather than seeing it in\u00a0its proper place, as a means to the ultimate end of everything in the universe: God\u2019s conjunction with man.<\/p>\n

So \u2013 what does all this have to do with my temporary obsession with Facebook-ing my son\u2019s antics? Well, what was going on there was this: I was paying more attention to the image<\/em>\u00a0I wanted to create of childhood joy than to the childish joy itself. Now it\u2019s true that it would be a mistake to idolise childhood joy as an end in itself, too \u2013 but if I\u2019m stuck even before<\/em>\u00a0that, I need to deal with idolatry on that most basic level. To stop idolising food, a glutton needs to start eating for the sake of a\u00a0healthy mind and body, even though health, too, can become an idol.<\/p>\n

None of this is to say that I think sharing precious moments with others is a bad thing. Not at all! I fully intend to continue sharing entertaining stories on Facebook, and I hope my friends and family do the same. The problem was that I let my obsession\u00a0with capturing an image distract<\/em>\u00a0me from the thing itself that I wanted to share.\u00a0It\u2019s not that the impulse to share was bad \u2013 it\u2019s that it was wrongly ordered.<\/p>\n

This kind of idolatry, I think, falls into the category of idolising \u201cthe works of our own hands\u201d (Isaiah 2:8, Jeremiah 1:16, etc.).\u00a0This kind of idolatry has always been a temptation for those who create, and for writers and speakers in particular \u2013 preachers included. The way preaching, for example, is supposed to work is that through study and prayer, a preacher gains some insight from God\u2019s Word, and then sets about to find a way to help others see that same thing. A good sermon is a finger pointing the listener to look in the right direction so that he can see for himself\u00a0the truth that the preacher is trying to convey.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately,\u00a0it\u2019s very easy for a writer or preacher to get so caught up in how<\/em>\u00a0they will convey that insight\u00a0that they start to pay more attention to their own presentation of the truth\u00a0than to the truth\u00a0itself.\u00a0Even without trying, they slip into idolising the thing they are creating. And they don\u2019t\u00a0even have to think it\u2019s particularly great<\/em>\u00a0to make an idol of it \u2013 simply to focus on it rather than on the original truth that they glimpsed. Instead of looking toward where they are pointing, they can begin\u00a0staring at their own finger.<\/p>\n

To use a very recent personal example: last week I blogged on an insight<\/a> that I\u2019ve had into my relationship with Anne, namely, that she tends to start with the ideal and try to draw the real world up to it, whereas I tend to start with real and try to nudge it in the direction of the ideal. I\u00a0mentioned that it\u2019s been behind several disagreements. Well, later in the week Anne and I disagreed about something \u2013 I don\u2019t remember what now \u2013 and my first impulse was to try to make it fit into that paradigm, to make it about our different ways\u00a0of approaching the world. Turns out, it wasn\u2019t about that at all. Lots of our arguments aren\u2019t. And, more than that, there are plenty of cases where I\u2019m more of an idealist and where Anne is more of a realist. The insight I described in that post is very real and very useful \u2013 but now that I\u2019ve put it in words and shared it, the temptation is to see\u00a0everything <\/em>through that frame, to fall in love with that way of looking at things and try to force\u00a0everything to fit\u00a0the dynamic I described there. That, I think, is a perfect illustration of idolising the work of my own hands: instead of using that insight as a tool for looking at our relationship, I try to bend the relationship to fit the tool. I make the image more essential than the thing itself it is supposed to serve.<\/p>\n

So, how to avoid this kind of idolatry? There\u2019s a great passage from Married\u00a0Love<\/em><\/a>\u00a0about the love of growing wise vs. the love of wisdom, which I think applies more broadly as well. Here\u2019s the passage:<\/p>\n

Wisdom cannot take form in a person except through a love of growing wise. If this love is removed, a person is completely incapable of becoming wise.\u00a0On the other hand, when a person has acquired wisdom for himself as a result of that love, and he loves that wisdom in himself or himself on account of that wisdom, then he forms another love, which is a love of wisdom. There are, in consequence, two loves in a man, one of which is the love of growing wise, which comes first, and the second of which is the love of wisdom, which comes afterwards. But if this second love continues on in a man, it is an evil love, and is called conceit or love of his own intelligence. (Married\u00a0Love\u00a0<\/em>\u00a788)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Notice that: even if a person has discovered something genuinely true and wise, if he starts to love it in\u00a0himself, or love himself on account of that, it becomes evil and false.\u00a0He makes an idol out of it, stares at his own finger, and instead of becoming wise becomes foolish. The solution? Focus instead on the love of growing wise.<\/em>\u00a0Applied more widely: the love of sharing something precious, or creating something that points to truth, is great. The problem only arises when we start to focus more on the form or creation that we\u2019ve made than on continually appreciating \/ searching for those things of value. In the highest degree, this means loving God and seeking to know Him more, rather than loving our own picture\u00a0of Him, the sight we\u2019ve had of Him in the past.\u00a0To fall in love even with an accurate image eventually distorts the image and becomes idolatry.<\/p>\n

So, to sum\u00a0up \/ notes to self: don\u2019t stare at your finger. Don\u2019t confuse the image of a thing for\u00a0the thing itself. Don\u2019t assume you\u2019ve found the purpose for a thing until you\u2019ve seen how it serves the ultimate purpose of conjoining God with man.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019ll still post\u00a0goofy videos of my kids\u00a0on Facebook. I just won\u2019t grump about it if I don\u2019t have a camera handy to capture everything.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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