idolatry
On a recent trip I found myself driving through Washington, DC. I hadn’t planned that route, but it was the way the GPS directed me. I made the best of it, pointing out monuments, museums, and other important buildings to my son in the back seat. It’s been a minute since I went to DC with my family in middle school, so it was just as cool for me as it was for my twelve year old.
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but there’s been a whole lot of turmoil in our nation of late. As I edit this, I’m struck by how even since the original writing of this, less than two weeks ago, the turmoil has only increased. Day after day, I’m brought back to Psalm 46,
“The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.”
These words just ring so true to me and yet there is such comfort in them, because God is in control. And so I’m convicted that I need to pray for our nation, for our leaders, our military, our people, that there would be repentance, that there would be revival, that we would humble ourselves as a nation before the Lord. I grew up proud to be a citizen of the United States of America. In my family we said the Pledge of Allegiance so much it was ridiculous (I kid you not, we said it at family reunions, at weddings, at funerals, when we passed by a flag while we were out walking). I am truly thankful to live in a free country.
But something else nagged at me for the rest of our trip. As we drove by all these beautiful monuments, The Washington Monument, The Jefferson and Lincoln Monuments, something occurred to me. Each one was built for a man, to honor a man. These were not stones set up to remember the great and mighty deeds of the Lord, they were set up to men, to ourselves as a great and mighty nation, to remind us how great we are. And in that moment the absolute horror of our situation, the depravity of it, washed over me in a wave of grief. We’ve confused our God and our nation, wrapped them so tightly in our minds and our hearts, that we didn’t realize that we had stopped worshipping God and had started worshipping idols.
Beloved sisters and brothers, for years, as the bride of Christ, we’ve rested in the idea that we live in a Christian nation, or at least a nation that was founded on Christian ideals and principles. I can’t speak to the intentions of the people who lived so long ago, but I think the evidence points otherwise. We’ve worshipped men. We’ve worshipped our freedom. We’ve made an idol out of our rights. We’ve forgotten that Jesus told us that we would face persecution and trials. We’ve forgotten that Jesus was never concerned with His rights. We’ve devalued our most important position as co-heirs with Christ and esteemed our temporal rights. We’ve cheapened our eternal freedom and exalted our earthly freedom. We have pursued happiness instead of pursuing holiness. We have exchanged glory for ashes.
I’m broken over our nation. It’s a hot mess and I know that I am culpable, that we as a church will be held accountable. The reality is, we could live in a nation that honors God. We’ve had over 200 years to share the love of Jesus with our neighbors, to serve the least of these, to boldly claim the name of Jesus as we live out our faith. We lament a lack of Christian leadership in our country where we choose our representatives. Perhaps as a church we’ve become so focused on the top, on the candidates and the issues, that we’ve forgotten about the people who elect them. Perhaps we’ve become so focused on church attendance and fundraising goals that we have ignored the proclaiming of the gospel to which we are called. Perhaps we’ve focused so much on getting it right, that we stopped caring about the people at all. We’ve let our politics influence our faith instead of letting our faith impact our neighbors.
I read these verse in Isaiah this morning,
““Ah, stubborn children,” declares the LORD, “who carry out a plan, but not mine, and who make an alliance, but not of my Spirit, the they may add sin to sin; who set out to go down to Egypt, without asking for my direction, to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh and to see shelter in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore, shall the protection of Pharaoh turn to your shame, and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt to your humiliation.””
They were spoken by Isaiah to Israel, but I feel like there is a parallel to the modern day church. Isaiah was warning Israel not to go to Egypt, to seek refuge there. Israel was to see the Lord and to trust Him to care for them. We have sought refuge in the law of our land and shelter in our religious freedoms, but perhaps we have failed to seek the Lord. Perhaps we’ve put our trust in a government that was never going to be able to protect us, because it is not our God.
We must become more focused on the eternal freedom of those around us than we are about our own earthly freedom and temporal rights. It’s time to seek the Lord with all our might. It’s time to prepare for the persecution and the trials we were told would come. It’s time to encourage one another. It’s time to start living like we’re following Jesus through the Galilean countryside and into the cities and the temples and lepers’ dens to tell others of the freedom that He offers. It’s time to wash the feet of those who would betray us. It’s time to be ready to sacrifice everything we hold dear to follow him into the uncomfortable, into the dangerous, into the trials, into the brokenness, into the stillness, into whatever He would use to refine us and glorify Himself.
