Release Date: April 28th, 2026What Idols?
- by Ken Driedger
A lesson I remember vividly from 1960’s Sunday School was of an African boy who suspected that his family’s god was really powerless. So, he buried the idol to see if it could save itself. Of course, the idol didn’t extract itself from the dirt, so the boy gave his life to Jesus instead. His example was commended to my class. We all felt smugly superior – which of us had ever even considered trusting a statue for anything?
Idols can be ideas and values – even good ones.
Since then, others have articulated how idols need not be sculptures or even things we formally worship. Idols can be ideas and values – even good ones. If we ever value our identity with respect to anything over the identity Jesus gives us, that thing has become a substitute – and necessarily false – god.
As a young adult, I allowed some of my relationships and possessions to become idols in this way. While they were definitely good gifts, my excessive valuing of them made them into things that drew me away from Jesus. It was a painful mercy that God took them away before they harmed me too much.
After grieving the loss of those good-gifts-become-false-gods, I read Psalm 115.4-7’s comparison of the apparent abilities of an idol with its actual abilities:
5 They have mouths, but cannot speak,
eyes, but cannot see.
6 They have ears, but cannot hear,
noses, but cannot smell.
7 They have hands, but cannot feel,
feet, but cannot walk...
It was a powerful indictment of the idols I had allowed to identify me. Then I read the conclusion of that judgment in Psalm 115.8; 135.18: “Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.” Not only had I trusted idols, but I had made God’s good gifts into those false gods, putting myself on the path to similar inability. Without realizing it.
So, I wonder what other good things I’ve made into idols without realizing it. Can churches fall into that trap? Will Braun asked Canadian Mennonite readers last November, “Is the main thing [still] the main thing?” Perhaps the difficulty of identifying the main thing reveals something.
What thoughts remain at large in our lives but are not obedient to Jesus?
As broken people in a broken world, all of us – even churches – are susceptible to making good gifts into false gods. Thankfully, there is grace and restoration in Jesus. For people who follow Jesus, that has to be the main thing. Perhaps that’s why Paul wrote to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 10.5): “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
Thankfully, there is grace and restoration in Jesus.
So… what good things are crowding out the knowledge of God, or trying to sit alongside Jesus on the thrones of our lives? What good things in our lives claim to be the “main thing” but actually distract us from the real “main thing?” What thoughts remain at large in our lives but are not obedient to Jesus?
- Ken Driedger is interim pastor at Poole Mennonite Church