Who is your idol? Growing up, we all had our idols – people we wanted to be like. Maybe we wanted to be like our parents, maybe a sibling, or likely an athlete or a celebrity. I know I sure did. I had many sports “heroes”, and for the longest time I wanted to be an Astronaut. I wanted to be them. I remember a TV commercial slogan they had for Michael Jordan, a professional basketball player here in the United States where they wanted you to “Be like Mike!” Every young boy wanted to be like him. Or as a girl growing up, you might have wanted to be like a famous actress or athlete where you want to be like the visual image they portray. In either case, you may have wanted to have the fame, the money, and the glory.
In other cases, maybe our idol was a parent, or a teacher, or a policeman or a firefighter. While admirable professions and roles, they are filled by humans who are not perfect. Yet, we want to be like them. Don’t get me wrong, parents, teachers, firefighters and the like all have qualities that are great to emulate, but they are not perfect people. They make mistakes. Athletes and other celebrities may have awesome talents and do a ton of good work for the community, but they are human. They make mistakes. Yet we want to be like them.
Even as adults, we still have idols. Except now, they are things like money, lust, power, greed, and envy. Or they are things that we may think as being good, like focusing on our career to provide for our family, or volunteering in the community and our churches because it is the right thing to do. Maybe it’s focusing on a hobby or exercise activity like running, or even the sports and activities our kids are involved in. These are all inherently good things.
John said in his first letter today, “Children, be on your guard against idols.”
Even these things we know are right and that we know are good can become our idols if they consume our lives and distract us from those things in life that should be more important – God, family and our neighbors. This has been a constant struggle for me, and I’m sure it is for all of us. Who is my idol? For many years it was my career and success. Not that we shouldn’t strive for success, but success in my career and moving up that corporate ladder became my idol, my driving force. It took my focus away from my faith. It was my focus on something I felt was right, that I felt was good in striving to be the best and providing for my family that it got to the point where it almost removed God from my life. Striving for success is good, but you have to have the right perspective. Fortunately the Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways and I have more balance now and a different perspective. But the struggle is still there.
So I ask you? Who, or what, is your idol? Where is you focus? Is it God? How many of us growing up looked to Christ as our idol, or as our role model? Or how many of us looked up to a Saint, and said I want to be like Saint Joseph, or Saint Jude, or St Augustine? Now I do – I want to be like St Joseph. I completely relate with St Augustine. I love the little way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and I want to be like her and have her outlook. And more importantly, I now want to be like Christ. But the struggle is still there. And I wish I would have looked up to them much earlier in life.
The more we focus on the idols of this world, the more it turns us away from who our true idol should be – Christ. The more we worship the idols of this world, the more distant we become from God until, if we don’t turn back, it’s too late. And this is what John alludes to in his letter today, where he talks about praying for sinners except those whose sin is deadly.
First and foremost we need to pray for others, especially those who we know are sinning. We need to pray for them, not only because they or others may pray for us in return, but also because we don’t want them to go down the path to the point of no return. We don’t want them to get to the point where they disregard the Spirit of God and completely alienate themselves from God’s grace, where they blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. This is the deadly sin, the point of no return.
This is only for those whose sin is not deadly. There is such a thing as deadly sin, about which I do not say that you should pray. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly.
When we continuously choose idols other than Christ, when we continuously worship material things and not the One who gives them to us, and when we associate the grace and gifts of God to simply being a natural cause of the world, we are in danger. We need to pray for people in our lives, or even that we see in the news, that we know are on a slippery slope, just as we need to ask people to pray for us. We all walk that slippery slope and are in danger of falling at any time, especially if our focus is on any other idol than Christ. Which gets us to the Gospel for today.
John the Baptist could have been jealous. He could have wanted the glory and given in to his selfish pride when Jesus came and started baptizing people. But he didn’t. He knew that he must be humble and adhere to God’s will, and he ends the gospel reading today by saying:
“So this joy of mine has been made complete. He must increase; I must decrease.”
John was so joyful when Jesus came. And he knew that his purpose and the job he was put on this earth today had come to fruition. He knew that he must step to the background and let the Son of God take over. John had the right priorities and understood his role. His idol was God, the Messiah to be sent to him who the Holy Spirit would identify.
We all must decrease. We all must re-evaluate what we focus on in our lives and ensure that we are not idolizing and worshipping the wrong things. It’s a continuous struggle, one where we constantly need to ask, “Where do my priorities lie?” We all must decrease those false idols in our lives that distract us, and we all must increase His presence. In the end, it all comes down to who your idol is.
