How Idolizing Hurts
There have been people throughout my life that I have really, really looked up to. Over the past few years I have figured out that every one of them has let me down. MAYBE THAT'S WRONG!
Here we go. Maybe, without knowing it, I have made them an idol. Someone is so nice or smart or caring that I figure that they can do no wrong. I try to emulate them. I start thinking thoughts like "what would so-and-so do if they were in my situation." I take this little bit of knowledge that I have of them and....I.....get it wrong. I build them up to a place in which they don't exist. I don't look up to them as much as I look up to my idea of them. The problem happens when my idea of that person clashes with the actual person. Then I am hurt and angry. "Why would this person let me down?" Have they actually let me down or have I built them up to a non-human level and set them up as an idol?
Is this how pornography really ruins marriages? It's not so much that a person likes looking at naked people or reading about strong men rescuing a beauty, it's that the person that they are actually married to is not as good as the person that they read about in the novel or see on the computer screen. "Why can't my wife do that?" "Why won't my husband rescue me from my life?" We build this image (or idol) of a person up to a point where no human could ever fulfill this perverted image that we have of a sexual partner or passionate lover. The bigger problem with this is that we can not be let down like we can with people. Here we have even come to a place where we have a false image of a human that doesn't exist in real life!
In my life as a Pastor I see this with guest speakers. The best job in the world is to be a guest speaker. You come in and preach a message that you have been working on for years. It's really polished and good. You have it memorized. People automatically give you the title saint and then you leave the Pastor at the church to be compared to you. Well, not really you, but the false sense of you that people have built up.
Idolizing hurts. It creates a false sense of life and creates a fake world. A world that exists only in imagination and not in reality. Maybe that is why the rise of "reality shows" has happened so quickly. People really want to believe that life is like that. They are sick of their own. They want to see someone succeed at life like they want to live it. Even though that person is really just their imagination of what that person is.
Idolizing kills us. We should have no other idols. Worship the Lord your God. God puts these things in perspective in the Bible. He really does. Yet most people don't want to read it. I can not believe that. That is why we are hurting people. That's why we get angry when our lives aren't going as we imagine they are supposed to be going. We have peace when the thought or image of our lives match up with the reality of our lives. Someone once said that he had learned to be content in all situations.
We don't find peace and contentment because we spend more time watching fake life on television than we do reading about real life in the Bible.
Here we go. Maybe, without knowing it, I have made them an idol. Someone is so nice or smart or caring that I figure that they can do no wrong. I try to emulate them. I start thinking thoughts like "what would so-and-so do if they were in my situation." I take this little bit of knowledge that I have of them and....I.....get it wrong. I build them up to a place in which they don't exist. I don't look up to them as much as I look up to my idea of them. The problem happens when my idea of that person clashes with the actual person. Then I am hurt and angry. "Why would this person let me down?" Have they actually let me down or have I built them up to a non-human level and set them up as an idol?
Is this how pornography really ruins marriages? It's not so much that a person likes looking at naked people or reading about strong men rescuing a beauty, it's that the person that they are actually married to is not as good as the person that they read about in the novel or see on the computer screen. "Why can't my wife do that?" "Why won't my husband rescue me from my life?" We build this image (or idol) of a person up to a point where no human could ever fulfill this perverted image that we have of a sexual partner or passionate lover. The bigger problem with this is that we can not be let down like we can with people. Here we have even come to a place where we have a false image of a human that doesn't exist in real life!
In my life as a Pastor I see this with guest speakers. The best job in the world is to be a guest speaker. You come in and preach a message that you have been working on for years. It's really polished and good. You have it memorized. People automatically give you the title saint and then you leave the Pastor at the church to be compared to you. Well, not really you, but the false sense of you that people have built up.
Idolizing hurts. It creates a false sense of life and creates a fake world. A world that exists only in imagination and not in reality. Maybe that is why the rise of "reality shows" has happened so quickly. People really want to believe that life is like that. They are sick of their own. They want to see someone succeed at life like they want to live it. Even though that person is really just their imagination of what that person is.
Idolizing kills us. We should have no other idols. Worship the Lord your God. God puts these things in perspective in the Bible. He really does. Yet most people don't want to read it. I can not believe that. That is why we are hurting people. That's why we get angry when our lives aren't going as we imagine they are supposed to be going. We have peace when the thought or image of our lives match up with the reality of our lives. Someone once said that he had learned to be content in all situations.
We don't find peace and contentment because we spend more time watching fake life on television than we do reading about real life in the Bible.
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