Mister Preacher: Never Meet Your Idols

I remember growing up and being, like, silly over some actor or songwriter whom I found out was a Christian. I would become pretty obsessed with them after that. If I’m honest, even if I wasn’t 100% sure they were a Christian, I’d be okay with that. If they just said some semi-religious things, I'd jump on that wagon hard.

Looking back, I think it’s a pretty strange phenomenon. I mean, I get that I wanted to be represented in the larger culture, and that I wanted to get behind my bros and sis’s in Christ. But blindly supporting anyone that either says they’re a Christian or just spouts off spiritual-sounding things is not very discerning.

What’s more, I see full-on adult Christians doing the same thing. (Me too, sometimes.)

Never Meet Your Idols

I’m not a big one for naming and shaming. I feel like it separates more than it helps. So, speaking in general terms: there are a lot of jerks being lifted up as religious idols who claim Christ and talk a good game, but do some really crazy, un-Jesus-like junk.

As a follower of Jesus, a former pastor, and someone who works within a fairly large ministry, I meet a lot of “famous” religious people (I put famous in parentheses because outside of our Christian circle, honestly, nobody really cares). What I’ve discovered after a junk-load of idol worship is that I tend to trust people who don’t look all that ”religious” on the outside, but in whom I regularly see the love of Christ, rather than those who talk a lot of religious mumbo-jumbo (no matter how accurate) but act like jackholes.

I went through a lot of letdowns to get to that point. I’ve seen the dark sides of a lot of holy rollers and it’s not pretty. I walked away from the religious scene for several years because my idols (including the church) let me down. And that’s all I’m trying to do here: save you a lot of heartache from holding up television stars, politicians, and so-called religious professionals as the high water mark.

Idols Are Dangerous

I’m not talking about penny ante sins, or one-time moral muck-ups. I’m talking about ingrained evil. Continuous, non-repentant behavior like belitting women (or anyone!), showing disdain for the poor, racism, slander, narcissism, greed, etc, etc, etc. Often, people are really good at hiding that stuff, and can talk a good game, but the folks we hold up as religious royalty are often pretty obviously loco. So, why do we idolize them? It's because they have something we want, or are something we want to be, and we can’t see past our idol worship. So we defend those sucker’s, bad behavior and all.

Our problem is that we want a king. We want someone else to do the hard work of sanctification so we can emulate them. We want them to wrestle with the difficult sayings of Jesus so we can just implement what they say. We don’t want to think, because we’re busy, and thinking is hard. And I totally get that. But it’s still a really bad choice.

When you put anyone on a pedestal, don't be surprised when they dropkick you on the way down.

Your pastor, your favorite television show personality, political candidate or best friend isn’t perfect, and, no matter how holy they seem, are certainly not worthy of your worship.

By way of full disclosure, I screw up on a minute-by-minute basis, commit all of the sins I said those guys above do, and I’m such a jackhole that I’m not even sure you should be reading this blog! But I do know One who you can put your faith in that will never let you down, lead you astray, or say insulting things about your sister (Although, your sister…). He’s the only one that actually deserves our cheers and praise.