Trading in our idols for everything

Here’s the thing about idols…

Idols stand in opposition to everything else in your life.

If money is my idol, I’ll love money above all else. If social status is my idol, the yearning for it supersedes everything in my life. If my spouse is my idol, s/he comes before anything else. If fitness is my idol, getting #swoll is my core identity and overshadows everything else.

I could go waaaaay on… Idolatry is an endless endeavor. It creates a hunger in us that is never satisfied and that pushes everything else in our lives away.

Attaching our love solely to the things of this created world is a competitive love. Hierarchical love. Love with various levels of priority. And it’s fine — we’re human and idolatry is just what we do.

Idols stand in opposition to everything else in life.

But Divine Love is different.

Divine Love is not competitive with anything else in life just as God does not displace anything else in life. Rather, God brings light to all of it. Loving God creates love for everything in my life. It’s an all-expansive and transcendent love, not a competitive love.

God does not displace anything else in life.
God embraces and brings vibrancy to it all.

There’s an old religious statement that says to lay all of our idols down at the altar. To give it all to God.

To the human ego, it sounds like God is going to take everything away and leave us with nothing. But that’s not what happens. We give our petty little idols to God so that God can give us everything in return.

When we release our death grip on our idols, we can open our palms and receive all of life as a gift rather than grasping onto our little sacred cows.