The Little Golden Calf

So maybe we don't necessarily have visible or completely tangible things like a golden statue of a baby cow anymore, but idolatry is not any less true in today's times. The old testament is littered with examples of God's people worshiping things or objects other than God. The main example here, as the title refers to, is the golden calf. The new testament though also warns of putting other things apart from God as the main object of our attention. The first of the ten commandments is to not worship any God other than our God. This in some texts includes a detail saying on Heaven or on earth. This implies something very important, and something I intend to stress in this post.

So the very important thing to note here about idolatry is that the things we can make into idols are more complex than what the stereotypical view of idols are. First off, which I think we all already understand is that idols are not simply statues or objects we can hold in our hands or set on our mantles. They are much more than that. They can be things that are important to us such as getting good grades, getting a promotion, being a good parent, winning the tournament, etc. So you might have noticed, those are all good things. They are not necessarily things we should avoid. There is absolutely nothing wrong with striving for ALL of those things. However, its the amount of importance that we put on these things that matters and what contributes to their "idol" status. So now I realize, we need to define what exactly an idol is.

Idol can be defined a few ways, and I want to show them all to you because they all vary a little and yet all have accuracy to the. Dictionary.com provides us with a few of them. Here is the first: "an image or other material object representing a deity to which religious worship is addressed." So what does this saying? It is saying that an idol, simply put, is something that we worship in place of God. God is supposed to be our number one focus in life and who we put at the top of our priorities. Our relationship with him is supposed to be number 1 on our list. Anything that is above him on that totem pole is by definition an idol.

The next definition we look at says: "a material object, esp a carved image, that is worshiped as a god." This definition implies that the idol or deity is not super-natural or divine, but rather formed or created by man or some other thing. Why is that important? If something is created by something else, it can not be treated as a deity. Something worthy of our worship cannot be created by us. If created by us, it is automatically below us and we shouldn't worship something we make. Do you worship the bench you made for your back yard? What about the anklet that you made for your friend? How about that tie-die shirt you wore yesterday? No? You don't worship those things? Just because it is less valuable monetarily than a shiny cow, doesn't make the cow statue any more worthy of worship. It is still man made, and not divine.

The next definition says this: "a mere image or semblance of something, visible but without substance, as a phantom." We can now take the last two definitions and decide to ourselves that this one definitely makes sense. Something that is often inanimate and man-made can't possibly have substance to it in a worshipful way. Sure, it looks cool, and we can admire the objects beauty or cool appearance, but it has no worship value. In a spiritual sense, it truly is a phantom because these things can not hold up.

Back to how I was saying that idols are not always physical objects though. You might ask, how? Well lets look at some examples. I think money is one that many people struggle with nowadays, whether they realize it or not. We have to look at the first definition here. What is more important to you at any given moment in the day, your relationship with God, or how much is in your bank account, how much your bills are, how much you are making on your paycheck, and how much gas prices have risen? I think if we all answer that question honestly, we care more about our financial situation that our relationship with God. We are far more stressed about finances and we are far more overjoyed when something good happens financially. I struggle with this too, don't get the impression I am calling people out.

Another one that I see a lot in college and saw a lot in high school is getting good grades. "Hunter, there is nothing wrong with striving for good grades and being the best you can." I agree completely. However, are your studies getting in the way of God. What I am about to say might hit home with some of you, just know I am pointing out something that ALL of us struggle with. How often do we not go to church/youth group/campus ministry because we "need to study." Sure, the workload for school is big, I get that, but we need to learn to budget our time better so that God, our supposed number 1 priority, gets the time he deserves and that when it is time to give him his time, we do it. Skipping out on church for homework is saying "I value my school more than I value my time worshiping God and studying his word." That may sound a bit harsh, but maybe its because we realize its true. Just food for thought.

Lastly, I want to look at something that is a little deeper, but something that I know I struggle with, and I am sure many of you do as well. It is the idolizing of relationships. I can be a romantic relationship, relationships with friends, or just the interaction with any people. "What does Hunter mean?" Something that often gets in the way of my relationship with God is my desire to find companionship here on Earth. I get very lonely here and although I have friends, many friends, I long for more. I idolize the idea of having a companion to be with. I am of course speaking of a girlfriend or future wife. I just love the idea of having someone in my life to share my life with and love on and give my affection to. Those are all good things. They are all Christian things as well that are promoted in our religion. However, it can get a hold of us and take over our thinking. Do some people only go to church in order to find "the right kind of woman/man"? Of course they do! Do some people think that the kind of love they are missing is the love between humans? Yes, but they are probably actually searching for the love of the Father that they haven't yet fully accepted. The same is true on the friendship level or on the level of general acceptance of others around them. All of this is idolatry. For me, relationships are an idol, as it is with most people.

To wrap things up I want to look at Timothy Keller and what he has to say about the matter. Keller is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC and writer of the book The Reason for God. He makes the point that when we have idols, they become our identity because as our deity, they are our reason for being. The point he then makes is this:


"Identity apart from God is inherently unstable. Without God, our sense of worth may seem solid on the surface, but it never is--it can desert you in a moment...If anything threatens your identity you will not just be anxious but paralyzed with fear. If you lose your identity through the failings of someone else you will not just be resentful, but locked into bitterness. If you lose it through your own failings, you will hate or despise yourself as a failure as long as you live. Only if your identity is built on God and his love can you have a self that can venture anything, face anything."

He is making the point that idolatry leads to building our worth on Earthly things, and therefore broken things since our world is broken and sinful. In putting our worth and identity in such things, we will inevitably be let down and it will destroy us spiritually and emotionally. However, when we worship the one true thing worthy of our worship, our identity and worth can not be shaken. We can not be moved. The reason then is obvious why God does not allow us to worship anything else. Not because he is some kind of dictator, but because he knows what will happen to us if we don't solely worship him. He knows what kind of destruction that causes in us and in our hearts. He loves us enough to warn us against this so that we know that he is the only thing worthy of our worship and the only thing that can keep us from the destruction our hearts will face.

I hope that you have found this inspired by God and not in a way where it sounds as though I am judging people. I too struggle with idolatry and that is actually why I wrote this post. I felt it on my heart to write about it and share my thoughts with you and what God had put on my heart. I hope that at least one of you got something out of this. I continue to pray for you as you care enough about this blog to read it and search for God speaking to you through it. 

Camp

So this summer, as some of you may know, I spent 8 weeks being a counselor at a Methodist camp where kids would come for a week to hang out, play, have fun, doing crazy crap, and learn about Jesus all at the same time. I came for 8 summers as a camper myself and this was my second summer on team, so it is like a home away from home for me. I just wanted to take my first posting after the summer to just reflect on the experience and share with you guys how good God was and what kind of growth I experienced.

First off, coming into the summer as returning team has a whole new feeling to it than when I came in as a new team member. I had more experience, I knew more what to expect, and I definitely already had a lot more friends than I did just one year ago. This time it was my turn to be the one to help the new people settle in and I was definitely excited to do so. During O-Week (Orientation Week) I feel like I really was able to embrace kind of a big brother role with my buddy and also with a few of the other new guy counselors and kind of help them find their feet here. It was really awesome and created some great friendships over the summer.

I spent the first 4 weeks straight on the high school age level. That is the age I love working with the most, but it is also the most draining in my opinion. Not only are you getting the least amount of sleep each night, but also it is the most active during the day and also the most emotionally and spiritually challenging and draining because at this point in their lives, they are dealing with the toughest issues USUALLY. Some cases you have the occasional middle school or maybe even elementary camper that has rough crap going on too, but the biggest struggles usually show themselves with the high school campers. This summer, we did something on Thursday night that focused on the brokenness of the individual and the societal pressures put on them and this REALLY brought out the sharing of brokenness. Dealing with all of that was tough, but also very cool because I got to see God use me to reach out to the kids and show them love despite their problems which they probably don't get much of back home.

I had multiple campers tell me how great of a counselor I was in those first four weeks, including campers I had last summer who came back and where really excited to see me. That is another thing that was a big change from last summer. I had campers that knew me each and every week and that was cool, but a challenge too. I struggle with pride sometimes and this summer was a real test of that. I like to hear good things about me and praises in my name, but at the same time, I hate that I like to hear it and I wish I wouldn't hear it because I know how quickly it can get to my head. When the campers are saying it, that's one thing, but its another when other counselors started giving me praise too. I was thankful that I was doing a good enough job to get noticed by other team members, but at the same time, I felt bad because I was just trying to do my job and I was getting praise while others were not. It felt weird to me especially during meetings when we would do something called "shout outs" where we just give praise to other team members in front of the whole team of a certain age group. To me, I feel like its good to give praise to people, but maybe do it privately, rather than in front of everyone. Maybe I am just weird about it because it is a struggle of mine, but I think that I grew in my ability to receive praise this summer and not let it get to my head AS MUCH. Just one of many areas I grew.

Week 5 I had a buddy. A buddy is a camper that is special needs that needs someone to be with them at all times to just make sure they are ok. They could have special needs for mental or physical disabilities. For privacy purposes, I won't share his name. If you were on team with me this summer, you know his name anyways. I just want to start off by saying that I had always wanted a little brother and getting the opportunity to look after this camper 24/7 for a whole week and just hang out him and I was really cool because I felt like I got to have the little brother I have always wanted to have. He grew so much spiritually and emotionally his week here and I am so proud of the man he is becoming and that he is allowing God to work in him. Being at camp was his first time away from his parents and it was a worry that he might not make it all the way through the week, that he might have to go home early. He made it the entire week though and only cried once at the end of the week because he was going to miss me and being at camp! I was so ecstatic that he had such a good week and he told me he could not wait to get back next year and have me as his counselor again. There are so many special moments I could share with you about this boy, but I will limit it to just one. On Friday night in worship, we do communion with the campers. He had never taken communion before and asked me about it. So I got to explain to him what communion is and why we do it and then I got to serve him his first communion and take it with him. I felt God so much in that moment and felt like the most blessed counselor to ever work at WWW. Then, he asked me to pray with him at the alter which was a huge deal because up to this point, he did not like to pray out loud with other people around at all. It was a huge step for him to have the courage to do that and it just blew me away how much God worked in him that week. I will never forget him or the week we had together and I continually pray that I am able to come back next summer and that I can have him as my buddy again.

One last story I wanted to share was about another camper I had last summer who came back this summer. Last summer, he was kind of less into his faith, for lack of a better phrase. He called himself a Christian, but I don't know that he really understood what that meant or lived it out at all. He was in my small group the week he came last summer and I could kind of see a change in him the week he was here, but it was very small. Then he came back this summer and I could see a huge change in him the minute I saw him at worship on Monday night. He was so into the music and the lyrics and just was full on worshiping God! It was awesome! So I sought him out the next day and just asked him what he had been up to since camp last summer. He told me that he had really changed, that he had gotten more involved at church and had accepted Christ into his life and that he was really convicted by God. He had just spent an entire month out of the country ministering to people of another country. It wasn't a typical mission trip, but they just went and spent time with the people and prayed with them and loved them. I could just hear the passion and the love in his voice when he talked about it. He then told me that myself and the other counselor who taught the small group with him, my good friend Morgan, where a HUGE part in his transformation. He said without us, he would not be where he was today. That blew me away. I cried, hard. I was so touched by the fact that God used me and my good friend to reach out to this young man and bring him into the kingdom and do great things not only in his community, but in another country. I found out later from another counselor from this campers church that the camper had been talking about Morgan and I and how much we impacted him at his church for a long time before he even got back to camp. It really showed me how big of an impact we have as counselors and if we truly love the kids and show them genuine love of God, we can literally change the world through the kids. It is still something that just blows me away and shows me how good our God is. To wrap up the story, on Friday night at worship, he was praying with Morgan at the alter. I played bass guitar in the band so I saw this happening right in front of me, so I put my bass down to go pray with them. After Morgan got done praying for him, I got up and went back to playing alter call music. Then he prayed over her and it really touched me. Much to my surprise, he then looked up at me and told me to come back down and he prayed over me as well and I will never forget the things he said to our Lord about me and the genuine thanks he had for me in his life and what I was doing for the camp and for all the kids. I am so blessed to have been a part of this young man's life and I am beyond excited to see how God uses him to bring God's kingdom to earth.

Outside of the campers, the team experience was fantastic this summer. I got to build more on friendships that I already had started last summer as well as start new ones with new people. I am sure that there are at LEAST a few that will be friendships that last a lifetime. I have never felt such a tight community of believers as I have the past two summers here on team. I know that we will all look out for each other and have each others backs for a long time. I would do a couple shout outs, but I would end up just naming all of team. I made a few friends that were closer than others, but there is no need to name you, you know who you are. If you served on team this summer, know that I love you and pray for you every day.

The summer is over now and I am still at camp working for people who come on retreats and other things of the like. We have a band camp going on right now as well as a football team staying here and I am just lifeguarding, working in the kitchen, or facilitating the ropes course for them as they need it. It is nice to still be here, but weird too as the rest of team is gone and summer camp is not going on anymore. Its almost like a whole new place here now.