By Father Casey

Throughout Lent we've been considering the things around us that desire our devotion. Faithful people have had a word for these things which have been around since time immemorial: idols.

Scripture has a lot to say about idols, and what the prophets and psalmist typically have in mind is a man-made object, something visible and tangible to venerate and praise, in place of the invisible and intangible "I AM." It would seem that the ancient Hebrews struggled to resist the temptation to fabricate shrines where they could call upon alternative deities to solve their problems and answer their prayers. Archeologists have found thousands of such places around the Holy Land dating from the time of the kings of Israel and Judah.

Today we are far too sophisticated to think we could make gods out of gold, wood, or clay. We are too advanced to think that an object we fabricate could possess power to answer our prayers. We know better than that…don't we?

Apparently not. Today's idols don't sit silently in shrines or gleam from hilltop temples. Instead, they blare at us from screens and glow in our pockets. They dominate our calendars and make dramatic promises of health and happiness. The reason they are so difficult to resist is that they start out as good things. For example, security and comfort, which were the first two idols we considered this Lent, are inarguably good things at first. Without security it is hard to create a safe and stable community, and comfort enables us to refresh our weary bodies and souls. Yet, as good as both are, neither deserves to be put at the center of our lives; neither should be prioritized above everything else, or cause us to neglect the work of loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves. When we make them the most important thing, they stop being good and start being idols.

This past Wednesday, we considered another inarguable "good" that we can mistakenly make into an idol: our family. In her presentation, my wife Melody spoke about the temptation to think of our families as our possession, as something that belongs to us, but this can unintentionally cause us to forget that Christians are baptized into a much larger family than those on our "23 and Me" report. We have been made siblings of each other, and that means there is nothing we can want for our own families that we must not also want for other families. Any good we want for our family that we do not also want for all families is a sure sign that we've made our family into an idol. I encourage you to watch the presentation, if you missed it.

Next week we'll bring this series to a close by considering one of the most insidious of all modern idols: politics. It is said that the United States is the most religious nation in the world, but our religious zeal seems more directed toward political parties than God. For a great many in our country today, their politics determines what they believe, rather than the other way around, and their political party platform is more influential than the words and witness of Christ. Our guest presenter to help us consider this grave idol is Brian Zahnd, an author and pastor I greatly admire. I can think of very few people today speaking with as much theological, Biblical, and pastoral clarity, and my copies of his books are dog-eared and marked up. It's no accident that he is our final speaker, just days before Holy Week, for in these sacred days we are confronted by the danger of putting our trust in political powers. The one who saves us is not a nation, nor a leader, nor any military or political entity, but rather the one those powers put to death, and it is his way, his truth, and his life that is the heart of our hope, now and always.

Fr. Casey +