BP 245
“Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery . . .” ~ Deuteronomy 8: 11-14
Reading this passage in the Bible, I suppose we could say that life is easy. Just remember God and obey His words. That can’t be so difficult, right? Well, it is. As humans, we easily forget God partly because there are idols in this world that so quickly draw our affections away from God. To remember God in this world is to go against the fallen flow. So often, it is easier, safer, and more “natural” to pursue love of the material as opposed to love of God and others–especially if we have experienced hurt and offense at the hands of others.
No wonder John writes, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world” ~ 1 John 2:15,16.
All of us most likely know someone (besides ourselves) who has become enamored of the idols of this world. We also see examples of idol seekers in literature. One man who was an idol seeker dated a woman named Belle until his affection for her was replaced by another affection. Belle commented about her boyfriend, “Another idol has displaced me . . . a golden one.”
Do any of you know the identity of Belle’s boyfriend? It is none other than Ebenezer Scrooge.
Scrooge, of course, is the penny-pinching protagonist portrayed in Charles Dickens’ short story, A Christmas Carol. What a downward trajectory Scrooge sank into due to his idolatrous choices. Instead of opening his heart to intimacy, love and generosity, he drove himself hard into self-sufficiency, bitterness and greed. He moved away from God and people instead of toward them.
Repurposing the bricks of pain and bitterness from the foundation of his childhood years, Scrooge constructed a prison that incarcerated his heart. This dark dungeon was not built in a year, of course. This isolated man made hundreds of decisions every day that ultimately entombed him in the gloomy mausoleum of his miserly heart. Day by day he chose to love the idol of wealth instead of God and the humans around him.
Be careful what you love.
A lifetime is defined by the sum of the millions of decisions we make beginning in childhood and ending the day we die. These decisions will determine our health, our loves, and our mental health. Above all, these decisions will determine the course of our relationships. We will become people defined by our entrenched relational patterns, choosing to move toward others, against others or away from others.
Many individuals discover too late that the love of their life is Something instead of Someone. Some of these people choose to love Something rather than someone because they have been hurt so much by people that they protect their hearts with safer “friends” like pleasure and wealth. Idols can be managed whereas God and people are not so easily tamed.
Beware of the need to control things. Control is the opposite of love.
The truth is that it is less important what happens to us in relationships than how we respond to what happens to us. Like so many forks in the road, we are free to choose the left path or the right path of the relational forks in the road we encounter. The path we choose at any given moment will then determine what options present themselves to us at the next fork in the road and the next and the next.
Clearly, then, we need to be intentional about how we respond to what happens to us in this world, especially in the arena of relationships. One choice pursued thoughtlessly or impulsively may influence all that follow. Afterall, like the 54 wooden blocks in the Jenga tower, our choices are all interconnected.
Replacing God and people with impersonal idols is naturally easy because the human heart is “a perpetual idol factory” ~ John Calvin. Just read Romans 1:18ff. But if our naturally sinful hearts have also been hurt or offended by others, we will be even more prone to forsake relationships and pursue Something. Idols are easier than intimacy.
Before we know it, we realize that our journey of decisions is at an end. When we look back and assess the decades of our lives, we may marvel joyfully where our path has brought us or grieve despairingly at our final destination. Oftentimes, we might even mourn bitterly because we seem to have no idea how we arrived where we did in our relationships with spouses, parents, children, siblings, friends, lovers, neighbors, and even the God of the universe.
Like Ebenezer Scrooge, we may have never intended to end up where we did—a world so full of idols but so bereft of loving relationships.
Fortunately, for Scrooge, the coldhearted miser was visited one night by the terrifying specter of his deceased partner, Jacob Marley. Marley and the three spirits who followed him came to open the eyes of blind Ebenezer so he could see the horrifying end toward which he was marching.
Trembling and terrified, Scrooge’s heart of stone was so distraught at the message of the four apparitions that he cried out to his final phantasmic visitor, “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. . . . But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me! . . . Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life.”
In other words, promise me that there is still hope for me to forsake my love for idols and instead love people.
Shaken to his core, Scrooge abandoned his radical commitment to idols and chose to pursue an altered life characterized by love for his fellow man. Instead of hiding behind the dungeon walls of his wealth, he broke free and moved toward people.
Yes, it was late in his life journey to make such a change, but far better late to alter a downward relational trajectory than never to have altered it at all. Undoubtedly, he died with family and friends at his side instead of alone in his lonely house that felt more like a mausoleum than a mansion.
So, what would Ebenezer Scrooge say to us today about the ten million relational decisions we all make over a lifetime that will lead to a love of Something or Someone? It’s highly likely that the repentant “Bah humbug” Scrooge would look us in the eye with a passionate fire and challenge us to consider wisely the truth that life is less about how others treat us and more about how we choose to react to the wounds (both real and perceived) that we experience from others.
The danger after being harmed by others is that we often react to this pain with coping skills that guard our hearts even against love and thrust us into self-made dungeons of total voluntary isolation and self-protection. Then, like Scrooge, we’ll settle for pursuing a safe impersonal affection like wealth instead of relationships; we’ll care about something but not someone and miss out on the greatest “commodity” in the universe.
This commodity may not be more important than love, but it does come before love, and without it, love is unattainable. Without it, there is no hope for friendship. This commodity, coupled with your response to it, will determine your destiny. Everything in your life will be impacted by it if you choose to pursue it or reject it.
This commodity is the primary factor impacting most mental illnesses. In fact, like Ebenezer, your life will not be worth living if you don’t know reject worthless idols and pursue “it” instead. If you haven’t understood its importance, you will forever surrender the hope of being truly happy in this world. Your life will be a highway strewn with potholes of regret and despair; and you may die alone.
So, what is this primary commodity? It is simply known as Presence.
Presence, as some of you already know, is the cornerstone of the Designer Therapy for Life blog. Presence originates in the personal Creator God of the universe. It is what we were made for by the God of Presence–Immanuel, God with us. Presence can be defined by words like “withness,” relationship, intimacy, being known, being seen, pursued, loved, and reconciled.
So, be aware of forsaking relationships out of the rebellion of a fallen heart that desires idols instead of Jesus. Also beware of letting your pain, suffering, anger, and self-protection build a wall against Presence and instead settle for impersonal idols of fleeting pleasure.
We were created for relationships. But we fell far away from relationships and exchanged loving Presence for things. Then Jesus came to reconcile us to the Father so that we might stand in His Presence and know the love of God forever, so that we might love Him and every person on the planet.
So, identify and destroy every obstacle to the Presence of God and other people. Nothing else matters—psychologically, relationally, or spiritually.
Nothing.
Don’t forget God like old Ebenezer did until he got his jolting wakeup call. Remember Him who is so much better than any idol this world can offer!
19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” ~ Romans 1:19-23
“My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
6 when I remember you upon my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
7 for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
8 My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me” ~ Psalm 63:5-8
