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A Few Thoughts on American Idols and Idols in General
May 1, 2007
Mike Evans
”A Few Thoughts on American Idol and Idols in General”
May 1, 2007
I am not one who works particularly hard at staying atop pop culture. Last time I checked, Abba and Boston were still on top of the charts. However, one of the ways I do “keep in touch” is by watching the reality series “American Idol.”
Karla and I tape the show and then quickly run through the highlights. I have voted for a contestant on only one occasion in the show’s history. During last year’s finale I voted 56 times for Taylor Hicks. He won. I’m still not sure what got into me.
The premise of the show is that everyday Joes and Jills who would never have an opportunity otherwise to make a name for themselves in singing are given the opportunity to be heard in front of tens of millions of people, who in turn vote for their favorite via a toll free number.
I am convinced that the appeal centers around the “rags to riches” factor. Most everyone roots for the underdog. The show is swimming with underdogs, one who will win, and several others who will begin lucrative careers in singing following the conclusion of that season.
While I do not worship any American Idol contestants, I do have respect for them. It takes a lot of guts to stand before the world and belt out a Barry Manilow song…and then to be critiqued…often times very harshly in front of this same world.
In the Old Testament, the word for idol means “appearance.” An idol is any appearance that we seek to substitute for genuine spirituality.
I’m convinced that hordes of Americans, especially young and impressionable ones, live vicariously through the successful contestants on shows like American Idol. We see their success and live in their “moments.”
True idolatry only gains the upper hand when the power and presence of God is absent in one’s world.
When the power and presence of God is gone, idols will sprout up everywhere. But whatever the idols may be, they are always nothing more than “appearances” masquerading as the real thing.
Nearly anything can be an idol…money, sex, family, home-schooling, hobbies, intellect…you name it!
But in every case, these idols are nothing more than shameful substitutes for genuine spirituality. All of us are guilty of being idolaters.
Having been made in the image of God, every human being was made to worship…and worship we will.
Some will worship the one true God revealed in Scripture in all of His Triune glory. Others will not. No one will consistently and perfectly worship God in this life. All will face bouts with idolatries of various kinds.
Let’s take a very brief glance back at idolatry through the years. Thirty-five-hundred years ago, God spoke to Moses and said, “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above…I am a jealous God…” (Exodus 20:4-5a).
If you take this literally…or should I say rather that if words mean anything, then this commandment pretty much rules out idolatry as acceptable.
About two thousand years ago, Jesus taught that “…where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Whatever we truly value most in this world, regardless of what we profess with our mouths, is where our heart will be. Our hearts always follow inexorably after our truest treasures.
Sixteen hundred years ago, Augustine of Hippo wrote, “Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” Search all you want, but only vast and empty wastelands await all who worship not Jesus Christ.
Five hundred years ago, John Calvin wrote, “the human heart is an idol factory.” Man has always been drawn to idols and appearances more than realities. I suspect it’s because the shadows of appearances go home at night. They disappear.
By contrast, the person who worships God, the thrice holy God before whom all of heaven and earth will bow down one day, never slumbers or sleeps. He is not a mere appearance and He never goes away.
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, God remains the same….always the same…but gloriously so!
Four hundred years ago, Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and philosopher wrote, “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”
Pascal hit it right on the head! If there is any created thing in our lives that brings us more joy, delight, and satisfaction than God, then we are by this definition idolaters.
What is created in this universe? Well, everything except God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. One God in three persons. All else has been created.
Nearly three hundred years ago, the great American theologian Jonathan Edwards wrote, "The enjoyment of [God] is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. ... Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends are but shadows, but enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean."
Edwards might as well have said that all these other “things” are potential idols in our lives. So how does a man love his wife in such a way that she doesn’t become a substitute for God?
After all, husbands and wives seldom die simultaneously… and if I love my wife and cannot live without her (note that I am not saying that I cannot imagine living without her), then she is God to me, and my joy in this life will prove to have been but a shadow.
Don’t let me off the hook. I asked a question two paragraphs ago and I have not yet answered it. If it is true, as I suggested earlier, that idolatry occurs when the power and presence of God is absent, then the reverse is also true: When the power and presence of God is present idolatry is absent.
So the answer to how a man may love his wife as Christ loved the Church, without making her into an idol, is that he must seek the power and presence of God.
How does he do this? God is first and foremost made known to us through His Word, the Bible. Labor to become more acquainted with this precious Word. Meditate upon it day and night. Memorize it. Talk about it. Do what it says and you will know both the power and presence of God.
Honestly and graciously assess the place where your family worships each week. Do the sermons have a sense of the eternal? Do they magnify the glory of God? Do they give you even a glimpse of glory? Or, are they primarily psychologized homilies related primarily to perceived needs.
How about it. What is it you really want? A therapeutic shot in the arm on Sunday mornings or a grand and glorious vision of an Almighty God who works all things after the counsel of His own will to the praise of His glorious grace?
You have to help us pastors here for there is often times enormous pressure on us to be warm, engaging, and above all, entertaining… for as the church growth guru of the 21st century has said, “It is a sin to be boring.”
This is very different than the basic and timeless command of Paul in I Timothy 4:2 to pastors: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.”
I don’t aim to be boring, nor do I aim to entertain. What I aim to do week in and week out is, as Edwards said, to “…labor to get a sense of the vanity of this world” and to grasp a glorious vision of the God Who Is. I know that I desperately need this…for idols (and I don’t mean American ones) are always lurking about in my life.
Is God always my highest treasure day in and day out? No. Far too often my eyes are on the temporal appearances. But I do know with my brain that I will never be of much use in this life until I develop an unquenchable thirst for the next.
I challenge you to answer this question. Ask your spouse the following question: “What regular influences in your life cause you to like God more and more?”
If we cannot answer this question, we are fertile soil for idols growing up all around.
Pastor and teacher Sam Storms said, “The reason we do not lose heart now is because we contemplate unseen things. Everything that occurs in this world occurs for our eternal joy.”
If this is true, then it must be said that the reason we lose heart is because we are looking through flawed lenses. And we are.
But when all else around us may be falling away, the contemplation of unseen things, like God, eternal glory, the new heavens and earth, is what will give substance to our lives.
And so brothers, we fight this battle against idols together…day by day, by God’s grace having more of a taste for the eternal than we did the day before.
The American Idol show may be a phenomenon, but the idols of Americans are shadows that bite, steal, and kill joy and the earnest pursuit of God Himself. Don’t let ‘em!
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