You Become What You Worship

"For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles." -Romans 1:21-23

The Bible tells us that we were made in the image of God, that we were set in the Garden as God's icons, as his idols even, making visible his unseen care and rule and joy. We were made to behold and reflect God's beauty, mirrors to his face, moons to his sun. But we're dumb ("fools" is the technical term), so we stopped doing that and started looking at other things, looking to them to save and satisfy us. And the image began to seep away. Our minds, made to consider and ponder and form new ways to worship, became futile in their thinking. The lights went off inside. We're solar-powered; as soon as we duck in the shade, our systems shut down. We're cut off from the Source. The writer of Psalm 115 nails this: "Those who make [idols] become like them; so do all who trust in them." Those who worship dead things become like them: unseeing, unhearing, unfeeling. Unliving.

If that doesn't make you a little squeamish, you probably haven't reckoned with the fact that money can be an idol. Marriage. Beauty. Power. Possessions. Popular opinion.

Worshiping idols undoes us, tears at our fibers. But gloriously, God's made a way out. A true worshiper, the True Worshiper, came into the world to rescue us out of the hole we were digging. He loved God with all his heart (the only one who ever did), but on the cross he became our idolatry so that we could become his worship of God. He beckoned us back into the light, clothed in his record of righteous praise. And now, as the Holy Spirit shows us the beauty of Christ in that very good news, "we...are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" (2 Cor 3:18). Jesus turns back the clock on our disfiguration, and as we worship Christ, we become like him.

You become what you worship. Choose wisely.