Becoming

It's silly, really. Idol making. Jeremiah paints a caricature of the silliness of it. Cutting down a tree, crafting some God or other, and then bowing down to it. Hysterical. Martin Luther famously, though more starkly, commented that our hearts are idol factories. We're constantly looking for new things, false things, to worship. We're constantly crafting for ourselves new images that might somehow satisfy us more than God or be worthy of the worship we were created to pour out. But, there won't ever be something more satisfying that God. And there won't ever be something worthy of our worship besides God. So, these raw descriptions of our idolatry are silly. Terribly, disappointingly, vainly silly.

Worse than the silliness of making idols is this image: becoming like what we've made for ourselves. Not only are the idols we falsely worship mute, blind, deaf, unable to smell, or feel, or walk - but, as the Psalmist indicates here, we become so unfeeling as well. We lose our senses, our awareness of both good and bad, callous to sin and numb to grace. It is perhaps the worst position in which to find oneself. So, here we are. Sunk in sin, spiritually dead, without any hope of rescue - and praying to gods of our own making to save us. When we truly understand our position before God, it's not silly anymore. It's pitiful. You can't help but pity those you see in such a state. You can't help but pity yourself. You can't help but feel entirely, utterly destitute and hopeless. You cry out with Paul, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"

Yet, even there, Jesus breaks through. "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! ... There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Amen! Jesus rescues us. More than that, Jesus gives back our senses, our awareness of who we are in Him, sins that need confession, and grace that is worthy of praise to our God Who is worthy of glory. I must die to sin every day. I must live to Christ every day. Only then do I avoid becoming like those idols - by becoming like Christ.