See part 1
"What are we living for?
Things that kill and die, such as ourselves? Or things that give lasting life? Idols are things that kill. We die if we live for idols. We are truly freed from idols only by the power of God's grace, that is, by the free divine gift of God's friendship through Jesus.
Often we are unaware of the idols that kill us and, as a result, we neglect their deadly roles in our lives. Once we become aware of our idols, we still need power to be freed from them. We find ourselves, however, without the needed power within us. We need help from One who cares for us and has the power to free us. We need the power of an all-loving God. The Good News is that such power is in fact available to us.
Our having idols at all is a spiritual heart problem. It signifies distortion and corruption at the spiritual core of a person. It is, in the end, our failure to put first things first, in particular, the first One first in our lives. Left untreated, our idols empty our lives of peace, joy, and unselfish love.
Idolatry begins as theft from God, the gift Giver, as we value something or someone in a way that hinders the love and trust we owe to God. Idolatry turns back on us, however, to keep us from having what we need for true, lasting satisfaction in life.
In the end, the greatest human tragedy is idolatry. It diminishes and even severs friendship with God, the only Giver of lasting life and satisfaction. Out of the tragedy of idolatry come all other human woes, including addictions, worries, selfish fears, resentments, jealousies, hatreds, and so on.
God proves His love for us by sending us Jesus to befriend us, even to die for us in self-giving love. The provision of this unconditional, unearned love offers the kind of satisfying friendship that makes idols pointless and even repulsive.
It thereby frees us from idols in order to enable us to love as Jesus loves. As an antidote to idolatry, we need the loving friendship of Jesus, desperately and vitally.
It is available to us all as an gift we cannot earn from God. The crucial question is whether we will receive it on God's terms, on terms that renounce idols. These terms can be challenging for us, given our customary reliance on idols (see Mark
We do the latter when we encourage or ignore, rather than challenge in love, the idolatry practiced by others. In receiving Jesus as Lord, in contrast, we find the key to freedom both from idolatry and from the enabling of idolatry in others. We find freedom to live in unselfish love as we receive God's freely given love."
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