While cleaning my closet recently, I thought about the passage in Exodus 32 where Moses finds the people of Israel worshiping a false idol – a golden calf. What do I find idolatrous in my own life? In my closet, I found many “golden calves” (also three pairs of gold shoes). One false idol in my life is collecting and storing clothing for the possible life I might have, not the life I do have.
Yet I am also worshiping a false idol if I believe I can organize everything all by myself and be absolutely perfect. We live in a messy world. The only perfection in my life, in our life together, is the love of God for all of us, made perfect in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God loves me because God created me, not because of anything I have done. To believe that I can be perfectly in control is also a form of idolatry.
This message is excerpted from “False idols” by Kristin Glass Perez in the January/February 2017 Gather magazine.
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