What Would You Do For An Idol?

I idolized a career in the arts for a very long time. My whole life, music has run in my veins, so I spent a few years jumping from singing to songwriting to acting, trying to land on one to start my life on. In my early years of high school, I wanted to sing or act for the rest of my life so badly, it hurt. I did unhealthy things to become a “better” actress and dancer, and I got to the point where I truly hated myself, because I thought I looked and sounded nothing like a traditional musical theatre actress. Give 14-year-old me a mirror for a couple minutes and she could come up with more flaws than there are minutes in a day.

Nothing was going to stop me from achieving this dream, though. If excessive working out, an overly restricted diet, an intense daily stretching routine, braces, an expensive skin-care regimen, and no social life was the way to a successful career, then so be it. 

A couple years later, I realized this wasn’t going to be my career. I felt a calling to counseling and ministry, but agonized over the idea of not spending the rest of my life in the performance world. It legitimately hurt. That is one of the most vivid memories I have of the excruciating pain it is to uncover an idol in all its hideousness and to start to dismember it. It felt like dismembering myself--and it was. This idolatry had taken over like a cancer, but I had been physically hurting myself to protect it.

It may not always show up as obviously as an eating disorder or constant obsession over self-image, but all idolatry is destructive. We are told often, but how many excuses do we make for our graven images? 

“I think this is an idol.”
“No, it’s a good thing. It’s good to love and enjoy it.”
“You sure do love it a whole lot.”
“It’s just who you are. This is a part of you.”
“Should it be, though? If it was taken away, I’d be devastated.”
“It’s just the way God made you.”

There is a whole lot of danger in that internal conversation, and I am certain that I’m not the only one who’s been over this script.

Isaiah 44:12-20 describes the work put into fashioning an idol, and the folly that idolatry is. The men in this passage make good things; tools, carpentry, food, and wood for fuel are all good. The folly is when the things they make become their all. The ironsmith works away at his tool, but forgets to drink water and becomes faint. The carpenter creates and cries out to an unresponsive idol. Men cut down great cedars, work for hours on end, and achieve things, but they end with ashes to eat, no water to drink, and a deluded heart.

When I reached the breaking point I realized that I had spent so many wasted hours cultivating my idol; all the days I missed a Bible reading or didn’t pray often, I guarantee you I spent counting calories, running, and obsessively reading over musical scores. All that work, and I never felt satisfied. In Christ, I am content. When Christ is my all, I lack no good thing (Psalm 34:10). He is worth daily sacrificing all the things I hold tightly and clinging to the cross instead. 

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in his wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace