Dancing with wisdom - chapter 5

Why do we tend to veer off into foolishness? None of us deliberately tells ourselves that we want to be foolish but we can so easily slip away from our chosen path. Like two lines that initially appear parallel but in reality are not, its only a matter of time before those paths will be far apart. The longer and further those lines travel, the more widely separated they become and they end up headed in completely different directions. The same can be said of our walk with God and what He intends for us as we journey with Him. It’s easy to veer away from the path He intends for us. No one reaches a destination they have always intended to get to if they allow themselves to drift. Without intense discipline or a system of continuous feedback, it’s very easy to veer off course.

Idolatry is an important root of foolishness and a major reason for us to go off course. When we think of idols, our minds can wander in two basic directions. The first is to the latest celebrity singer from, say, a famous worldwide TV show popularised by Simon Cowell. Secondly, it is natural to think of statues of maybe stone, wood or marble that people bow down to. These are both forms of idolatry. What is common is the sense of awe and reverence given to either gifted humans or to lifeless statues.

The Old Testament is full of warnings about the dangers of idolatry, along with the logic of why it’s so foolish. In a carefully thought-through deconstruction of idols in the 7th century BC, the Old Testament prophet Isaiah carefully describes the work of a blacksmith and a carpenter. Through this explanation, he shows us both their human skill and their frailty. The point he seeks to drive home is that part of the wood the carpenter uses is for firewood and the rest is used to make an idol to which is attributed supernatural power. His analysis is penetrating:

(The conclusion is also just as devastating.)

When described in such a way, it’s easy to see the foolishness of idols. How can something so clearly man-made have any real power? Isaiah graphically describes how the craftsman uses half of the material to make a fire and warm himself while the other he worships and attributes supernatural power. Isaiah wants to show how absurd this is. Yet even though this was written millennia ago, the problem of idolatry remains today.

Coming from a South Asian background, I’ve seen many temples with idols and statues to which the faithful bow down and worship. When I discuss this with Hindu friends and family, I am told that they’re not worshipping the statue but what is behind the statue. The statue, I am told, is a metaphor for a greater and deeper power. To me, that still sounds like idolatry. But there is also much more to this. It affects all of us no matter what our background, professed religious faith or even absence of faith.

To unpack this, let’s reflect on what we think an idol is. A broader definition is that it is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God does or anything you seek to give to you what only God can give. That includes looking to your own wisdom and competence or to some other creation to provide the power, approval, comfort and security that ultimately only God can provide.

An idol is whatever you look at and causes you to say in your heart of hearts, 'If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning; then I’ll know I have value; then I’ll feel significant and secure'. It’s important to understand that this does not necessarily mean that it is bad. But described this way, examples such as money, sex and power can become obvious idols when we allow them to take over our hearts and imaginations. They become a source of longing and hope for our hearts and lead us to being enticed in their power and grip. Unchecked, they can bring great harm and devastation to our lives. But the same can be said also about apparently good things such as family, career and health. If any of these become too important in our lives, if we put too much expectation and meaning onto them, we will find ourselves eventually disappointed and frustrated. While we may appear to succeed in enjoying these things for long periods of time, sooner or later we will find ourselves disappointed or frustrated by them. If that doesn’t happen during this life, it has to happen at the point of exiting this life. As these earthly things in which we put our expectation and confidence are finite they cannot last to infinity.

There is no limit to what our hearts can make into idols. Many centuries ago, Martin Luther described the human heart as an idol factory. Our hearts continually put weight and significance on objects and desires that cannot ultimately deliver all that our hearts long and hope for. Our hearts can’t live in a vacuum—they have to give significance and worth in order to mean something to us. The New Testament word which encapsulates this is epithumia. Literally, this means over-desire, an all-controlling drive and longing. This is revealing. The main problem of our heart is not only desire for bad things but our over-desire for good things. We turn created, good things into gods and objects which we worship and serve.

There are many ways to describe that kind of relationship to something, but perhaps the best one is to call it 'worship'. When we use the word worship, we mean giving ultimate worth and value to something or someone. In the original Hebrew, the picture is of bowing down and kissing the feet of a king. We tend to think of worship as singing in a church or religious context, but it is also much deeper than that.

When we worship someone or something, we give it our committed attention and focus. It’s where our minds go to when we have nothing in particular to think about. Worship is primarily an activity of the heart seeking rest and consolation. One of the best explanations of worship I have come across comes, surprisingly, not from a religious teacher but from an atheist American author and professor of English, David Foster Wallace. He gave a commencement speech to the graduating class at the Ohio liberal arts campus Kenyon College in 2005. Speaking in a secular context, he made the startling claim that in the reality of day-to-day life, there is no such thing as atheism and not worshipping something. The only choice we have, he told the graduating students, is what we choose to worship.

Whatever we choose to worship has a huge influence on how we live and what we pursue with our ambition. The danger in such worship is that we can become completely consumed by what has captured our imagination. If, for example, I worship money, I will always feel that I never have enough no matter how much I make. Similarly many of the people whom we think of as the most beautiful in the world privately talk of how ugly and insecure they feel. At the back of our minds, we know an idol cannot ultimately satisfy our longings, but that realisation is so often hidden from our awareness. The problems we have in our relationships with others, such as wanting control or power over them, reflects the fear that what we actually worship, our own ego and self-elevation, is at risk of being lost. The result? We can refuse to talk even to our spouse about a particular subject, or we have to protect our fragile ego by finding others to ridicule or blame or put down.

Foster Wallace describes these attitudes as unconscious default settings. We lapse into them without thinking, "They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware what you’re doing".

What’s so powerful about this explanation is that it unpacks how, at our core, we are creatures with a need to worship. We are 'continually attaching ultimate value, or over-desire, to something or someone who will meet all of our needs and aspirations. The problem is that nothing can ultimately satisfy. You may recall the previous comments we made about disappointment. Such disappointment points to deeper unfulfilled desires. The danger is that the sorrow that we can feel when we are disappointed can turn into despair if what we have put our hopes onto becomes an idol. With sorrow, there is the possibility of consolation. What makes despair so deadly is that there’s no prospect of consolation. At its extreme, despair can lead to suicide. The tragic conclusion of David Foster Wallace’s life was that despite all this amazingly perceptive analysis he went on to commit suicide.

As we discussed in chapter 3, social commentators talk about how we appear to be entering an almost epidemic of suicide in the wealthier parts of the world. People who commit or attempt to commit suicide are displaying a loss of hope in what they previously put their trust and confidence in. Whatever it was that they believed in, it can no longer fulfil the desires and longings of the human heart.

But these longings we have also point to deeper mysteries of life. I touched on something of that in the Preface, describing my own life when I turned thirty-six.

These longings and desires point to something beyond ourselves. C. S. Lewis vividly describes how, in the physical world, we can see instances where the longing of our desires is fulfilled. A baby cries in hunger for food and is satisfied by being given milk. Baby ducklings instinctively want to swim, which is why they go to water. Erotic arousal and desires seek fulfilment in all sorts of sexual experience.

But what about those desires which never seem quite enough to satisfy? If all our hope for satisfaction is in an earthly desire, it never seems quite enough. We live in the most technologically advanced stage of human history. Increasing numbers of people all around the world have access to a variety of resources and opportunities through technology that would have amazed and staggered previous generations. We can eat an almost limitless variety of food; we can travel around the world to distant and exotic places at relatively low cost; we can communicate instantaneously with friends and family around the world. Yet, the nagging question is …​ are we any happier than previous generations who had so much less than we do? More of the same is not guaranteed to produce more happiness and contentment. Have we fallen for the misguided idea that the more we consume the happier we will be?

Lewis’s conclusion is that if you have desires and longings, no experience in this world can satisfy them. They are not in us by accident. No other creature has this kind of restlessness. We do not see dogs longing for more than their most basic needs. The most logical explanation is one which our secular world is determined to ignore—that we were made for another world. Lewis’s hypothesis is that unsatisfied human desires have been planted in us as signposts to something beyond this world. While it is right and proper to be thankful for and enjoy the world we are in, we do so remembering they are 'only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage'. He concludes:

Idols are a poor substitute for what, ultimately, only God can provide. We think that the lure of idols is too strong. In reality we have lost perspective on how the living God is so much more wonderful and satisfying than anything which we could wish or hunger for. Here is how C. S. Lewis puts it:

The essence of foolishness is putting confidence in those man-made things that ultimately fail to deliver. Wisdom is being on a path leading us to lasting success, satisfaction and significance. It means shifting what we worship from the temporary and transient things of this world to the One who is eternal and can truly satisfy. We can summarise idolatry in the Bible as looking to our own wisdom and competence, or to some other created thing, to provide the power, approval, comfort and security we long for but which only God can provide.

The implication is that if my heart is an idol factory, if idolatry is such a natural tendency of my heart, it becomes necessary for me to recognise when I am veering into this idolatry. We can see that it is important to develop the wisdom skill of recognising when I am veering into idolatry. It is easy to say that we believe in God but still trust in something else for our real significance and happiness. Whatever that 'something else' is has become our real God. We have become experts at hiding this from ourselves. It is only when something goes wrong with, say, our career or family that we realise there are other things which have become more important to us than the God we claim to trust.

This is where the discipline of self-examination becomes so important. Those things we actually trust and have put our hopes in are surrounded by strong emotions. What are those things causing us to feel easily angry or despondent? They are those pointing to a goal or outcome we cannot reach and are feeling frustrated about. It may well be a noble and worthy ideal, but our emotional reaction can point towards attaching an excessive weight to what we think is the right outcome. Although it is easy to justify to ourself that our anger and indignation are appropriate and measured, are we, in reality, just putting ourself in a position of superiority and self-righteousness? This can be so deceptively subtle. The danger with excessive emotions is that they cloud our judgement and distort our vision of ourself and the world. This, in turn, leads to foolish decisions and a path away from wisdom, The path of wisdom, in this case, should follow our fears and frustrations to unmask those idols controlling us.

The Scottish churchman Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) described the secret of the only way to displace idols from our hearts— 'by shifting our hearts to a greater love'.

My conclusion is that no greater love is shown than in the Jewish carpenter who chose to lay down His life for mankind. As we grasp how much Christ has sacrificed for us, how He has descended, literally, to the depths of hell for us, we will begin finding the power to displace the idols of our heart for a greater love. You may have noticed that I have used the word begin to describe this process of dethroning our idols and replacing them with love for Christ. That is because this process is never-ending and will take our entire life.