A few weeks ago in one of our Community Groups the heart of idolatry metaphorically manifested in the middle of our living room, as we began to discuss the figurative fluorescent light bulb that began to hum over my head. (Can figurative CFL’s cut down on green house gases too?)

I was leading our group through the most basic Gospel presentation: here is the Divine Law, the Ten Commandments, written by God’s own finger, as violators of this Law we stand convicted and in need of receiving the Good News that the Law we have failed to keep has been kept perfectly by Jesus, Messiah, and the penalty we owed for breaking it likewise has been paid in full by the same God-Man.

The plan was to begin working our way through this Law, command by command, to discover our awful inadequacy in keeping it.

“You shall have no other gods before me.”

Being over simplistic for the sake of time, and adding a bit of foreshadowing for what was coming next anyways we quickly agreed that all of us in the room were staunchly monotheistic and moved to number two.

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord you God am a jealous God…”

Realizing that there was probably no one present, as well, who actually spent time bowing to actual carved images. Our idols, while just as idolatrous, are not in the forms of golden calfs but in our materialism, our personalism, emotionalism, and culturalism. Thus we moved back to tie Commands one and two together.

An idol, I defined, with aide from Tim Keller, is anything in our lives that if we lost we could not have a meaningful or significant life.

Using this formula we began to test idolatry in our own lives. Then, just as those Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs take a second to actually emit light, too the thoughts registered in my own mind…for a second…before realizing the heart of idolatry and emitting a look on my own face that displayed my distress.

Without speaking words one of the gals in the group gauged the depth of my realization.

“What’s our chief idol Erika? What can’t we live most without and still have a significant meaningful life?” I asked.

“Myself.” She replied, head down looking at the floor, avoiding eye contact in a shy convicted sort of way. “I’m my own biggest idol.”

And all of the sudden so much began to make sense, again…
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake find it.”

In a moment I knew the solution. Not that Christ needed to suffer again for my insufficiency of laying down my own desires, hopes, wants and will for His but that I must die again. Now, today, tomorrow, again and again.

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

And too, to cling to the Gospel and by faith know that the error of my insufficiency to lay down myself as my greatest idol is sufficiently remedied by my Redeemer (see Romans chapters 1-11) and…

“Therefore, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual act of worship.”

So, here I am Jesus, and I lay down once again and acknowledge you as Lord and me as crucified to my desires, exchanging them for yours.

(And I’ll be honest, when I wrote this last week, and prayed that quick prayer my Macbook bit the dust…leaving me to wonder what other idols I have…)

The one thing prohibiting most people from becoming followers of Jesus? Themselves as their greatest idol. The one thing prohibiting most follower of Jesus from growing in spiritual maturity? Themselves as their greatest idol.

So what have I learned?

I’m an idol unto myself…something, maybe before, only Billy knew.