Factories for Idols

# Chapter 197

The human heart is an idol factory. We can turn most anything into an obsession or an idol in our lives, where it blocks out all the vibrant other important pieces that make up life. We can make the most improbable things King of our lives. For instance my eight month old granddaughter holds me in the palm of her hand. Its a good thing she can’t talk yet, or I would give her whatever she asked for and bankrupt myself in a moment for her. But more commonly we make our career’s or our income or our business or our status or our house or car or our position or connections or football team, etc etc, our King. As we are natural worshippers, humanity always looks for a King to worship. Since we don’t care much for the Gods, we look for more temporal subjects and they are easily manufactured in our hearts. Remember the human heart is an idol factory.

And we are most indiscriminate about who sits in that throne. Since we disdain the Gods sitting there, we settle for much less. Less worthy, less eternal, less powerful, less character, less capacity, just less in pretty much every category. While the idols of our hearts don’t claim deity or a divine nature, we exchange the promise of eternity for the mundane, for the control and temporal nature and temporary characteristics of our heart idols. The nature of the Gods and all that they represent demands far too much from us, far more than we willing give, and so we exchange them for a while for the idols of our hearts. But you can’t escape the Gods, even were they no more than Father Time.