This week our blog starts a new series where different staff members discuss an issue of heart idolatry. I don’t think they picked me on purpose to talk about the idol of significance (Don, we are giving you one for which we all know you struggle), but I’m familiar with this issue because there are times my heart worships significance - I can be a glory hound, wanting honor to come my way that belongs to God alone.
Before I go too far, I don’t want to assume that the phrase “idols of the heart” is familiar to everyone. Elise Fitzpatrick’s book by that title has made the rounds at Grace Community Church before, but not everyone is familiar with it. By describing sinful attitudes as idols of the heart, we aren’t creating new sins, but describing ways that desires for certain things can become all-encompassing. These “idols” could be an unhealthy desire for something good like marriage or children. It could be something like greed or lust, which probably are idols of materialism and pleasure. This phrase recognizes that modern people worship idols in our own format. We don’t have fertility idols, or prosperity idols, or health idols in our home. We do often go overboard to get for ourselves the same things the ancients (and modern day tribal peoples) did through human-created idols.
Significance can become an idol in our lives in a number of ways. The more crass and immediately recognizable ways are things like desiring possessions or wealth to be noticed among your peers as having become successful. The car you drive, the house in which you live, or the vacations you take are designed to feed your hunger for significance. How is significance different than normal desire to have nice things? When significance drives you, you can’t keep these things quiet; you must trumpet them when significance is feeding these things.
Pastors, for sure, are tempted by the idol of significance. This is a more insidious form of it, because who can argue with planting more churches to reach more people to build Christ’s kingdom? Something that is a good thing, bringing the gospel to people through the church, can become an idol as we wrap our significance and value in our success as our main objective of serving Christ and reaching the lost world for Him. How can someone say the Christian leader is doing things for his own glory when outwardly he is clearly laboring for Christ’s glory?
If you are thinking that pastors can be a pretty sick lot, take a look at the things which determine your value. Is it the success of your children (how devastated are you by their failures to achieve your goals for them) that is all-encompassing? Is it your career, how you strive to be remembered as all costs? Is it your physical body and your athletic prowess? How does significance drive your life?
Let me give you are warning and a way out. The warning is this: glory (or significance) is toxic to the human heart. God alone is worthy of glory, and He alone can absorb honor. It isn’t toxic to Him because the honor He receives is deserving. If I believe I have earned glory for myself, it affects my relationships with others significantly. Do they give me proper recognition? Do they realize what a great person I am? Where is the respect I’ve earned? Glory is toxic, for when it is lost, it seems as if all is lost. Life is not worth living. There is nothing left for me. Glory has been lost, therefore all is lost.
What is the way out? Realize you already have significance. Meditate and dwell on the significance you have. Robert McGee’s book The Search for Significance has some helpful ideas if you wish to consider this further. It’s been a few years since I’ve read it, but I remember it having some helpful ideas and strategies for growing in Christ and battling an idolatrous desire for significance. The significant One has placed His significance in you by making you in His image. And in Christ you who were once enemies are now beloved sons. Let the love of God in Christ show you the significance you have already.
In Him,
Don