When you get right down to it, this is the number one idol that most of us worship: the unholy trinity of me, myself and I. But perhaps you are offended by lumping you into this category so quickly; so I’ll make it personal: I bow down regularly at the altar of myself. God help me.
I’m starting to see this all the time while I’m at school. I’m just starting to realize that, although we need a better term for it, being in school is spiritual warfare. In school, everything is existential: I will decide who I am, what I think, and what is true. I will come to this conclusions without the guidance of history or tradition. I am the one who decides.
To which God says, “I am, you are not ‘I am”
The exaltation of my ability to reason is not the only way in which I foolishly raise myself up as a false idol. I also demand that God answer to me for all of the suffering in the world—especially in my own life! Although it is healthy to wrestle with God in this way, we can also easily cross a line where God somehow becomes someone who must answer to us for His actions.
There’s so much more that could be said on how we order our lives around the deity of ME, but I’m going to live it here so as to be illustrative, not exhaustive. Does anyone else identify with this? Or am I falling prey to Christian self-loathing?
4 responses to “Idolism: Me”
I’ve never believed that I worshipped myself, nor that I was my own source of life – well, except for those few years… and oh yes, yesterday.
Cam: how about today? ;)
I think that I’ve gone a whole 53 seconds without worshiping myself at the moment…
You’ve nailed it again, Matt. It’s even hard to comment on the subject without exalting myself! Lately, though, and I hate to tell you how old I am and how long it took me to get to this place, I have a more consistent view of my place before God. Psalm 131 illustrates it for me. I am small, but beloved, and expected to behave as a weaned child, learning to eat solid food and walk, while relying to God to be God.
Beyond Words:
Thanks for the kind words. I’ll try to keep them from my ego.
A weaned child. There’s a good picture of our dependence on God.