Recently I have been reading through the book of Jeremiah. It is not always the most “feel good” book of the Bible. In fact, there are a lot of passages that speak to very dark places, hidden things, repeated issues of the men of old. One of the passages I read this week talks about idolatry and I started thinking more deeply about those idols in my own life that have kept me in the dark in my Christian walk.
We can all think of eleventy million things as believers that separated us from the love of God before we began our walk with Him. Even in a believing walk we backslide, sidestep and shuffle around the commands of God to fit our own agendas. All of us have lied, cheated in some way, stolen, done embarrassing things that were sinful. The hardest thing to wrap my mind around is when I repeat those behaviors even though I lived through them the first time, God forgave, I was cleansed, I thought I had learned to be an overcomer, only to fall right back into the same sad pattern of sinful choices and unforgettable regrets in my life that would continue to haunt me long after God forgave and forgot them on my behalf.
Why do we revisit our past sins over and over? We say it is so we will not forget how we hurt the Lord and denied His power in our lives. We want to keep the lessons so we don’t repeat them. But is that all there is to it?
In reading Jeremiah this week, I had a kind of eye-opening. Our old sin was washed clean, done, over, never to be brought up to us again. Jesus said we were freed of it, we were not to be shamed any longer, HE was crucified and took the guilt away…but in our minds and hearts there are just some memories of stupid things and horrid choices that have become idols in our own lives. We keep crucifying ourselves over the past sins, rather than living a crucified life in Christ now. We make our old sins into new idols.
What is an idol? It is something God says cannot be placed between us and Him. This means anything. It means money, people, a job. But more than that it means old baggage, old sins, dirty shame- driven behaviors. Satan brings those things to mind in tiny ways daily. We smell a fragrance that reminds us of a certain person, and we revisit the sin of the flesh moments we may have shared. Satan whispers a song lyric and we remember it playing in the location a sinful event came to fruition and changed the whole course of our life. We run into a past partner in sin randomly in a mall or at a party and the feelings of embarrassment and guilt rise up and overwhelm us. But why? Because we have let those people, places and events become hidden idols in our lives. We worship them by focusing our mind on them. We sacrifice to them by filtering our future relationships, friendships and choices through the lens of the poor engagements we experienced with others in the years that have gone by. Rather than becoming fully forgiven and forward-marching believers, we have chosen to carry a scarecrow.
Jeremiah 10:5, New Century Version, talks about this odd figure, the scarecrow, standing alone in a field surrounded by luscious fruit.
“Their idols are like scarecrows in melon fields;
they
cannot talk.
Since they cannot walk,
they must
be carried.
Do not be afraid of those idols,
because
they can’t hurt you,
and they
can’t help you either.”
And when I read that passage, I saw myself carrying that hay stuffed idol around, scattering broken bits everywhere I walked. He would have stood in that field and eventually succumbed to the elements of time and weather, but no. I chose to yank him up and tote him around. He couldn’t talk, but as I carried him, he would shout “see here, look what I did, who I was, how I have lived my disgraceful life.” That straw headed fool became a macabre badge of courage that I would pull out to explain away my harsh moments of personality, my shortcomings, my sins in the here and now. Jesus died and offered His fruit to me, He placed me in the middle of a field of a potential feast, but I conditioned myself to focus on the scarecrows of my life. By continuing to embrace the stain of the past sins rather than the forgiveness, I was finding my fulfillment, satisfaction, security, and significance in idols each time I spent my mind and heart on those dead pieces of my past.
We know, as believers, Jesus died for all our sin…not just the convenient ones, not just the “not too bad ones” in the eyes of the world. He died for all of them. We are grateful, we are awed, we are humbled and honored to be God’s children. Then, just like Rachel stole Laban’s household idols and hid them by sitting on them in her saddlebags when she was on her way to begin a new life, we tend to take just a few things from the old life with us, even though God said leave them behind. We carry them, like the scarecrow from place to place, never really able to deal with them or rid ourselves of them because they should not have come with us at all. We jam them right down in the field of fruit, and they get the focus of our attention. And the scarecrow has a name…it is Angst.
I think we take our own idols with us because we are afraid. We are afraid we are not forgiven for all. We are afraid that we dishonor God by forgetting our past. We are afraid that if we don’t “fix” our past life, we will never be able to enjoy a new life. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In the last two or three years I have learned when Satan brings to mind past transgressions, I play a mind and heart game with myself. I look at it as him enticing me to worship old idols of past sins instead of worshipping my Savior. Those things no longer deserve my attention, I cannot speak on their behalf any longer giving reasons and excuses for past behaviors. It is an unnecessary and fruitless use of my time and Christian walk. I am not to help the idols walk to another place and time in my life either. They were put to death long ago. The scarecrows have no life, they cannot walk, they cannot talk, they cannot hurt, they cannot help. unless we do it for them. They just simply cannot do anything without our willing involvement.
Gone is gone, dead is dead, done is done. It’s time to leave those scarecrows out in the field of the past, pick some of the abundant fruit God offers, bring it into our new life, and go in joy to the next place He chooses to love us and use us. Scarecrows have no brain, and we cannot sit in the company of the brainless. The walk is easier without the weight. But just for good measure, it probably wouldn’t hurt to strike a match and flick it over our shoulder as we make our getaway, just in case.
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