HEROES OR IDOLS

I look down the street and get nauseated by the thought of local heroes lining the streets telling people who they should be and how they should live.  Statues of Actors, athletes, politicians, the pretty, the popular, the wealthy.  How gross.  How conspicuous.  How familiar.

As I walk this ancient street, memories of my life half a globe away flood my mind. Commercials, advertisements, media, friends, enemies all telling me who I’m “supposed to be”.  This place is sickeningly familiar; it feels like home.  The street is well worn.  It should be – I’ve walked it mile after mile listening to the lies.  Maybe not this street but one just like it with “heroes” talking at me every time I pass by – a model says I’m not wearing the right clothes, a politician says he’ll make everything right.  Empty noise filling my head and clogging my ears.

Who are these “heroes”?  The athlete who makes so much money he snorts himself into a pit in a rehab hospital?  The model that wears all the right clothes and has every hair in place and finds herself eating pills every night for dinner because she can’t hold down food any more?  The politician that moves ahead hoping no one discovers his secret life of long ago?

Heroes?  No, idols, lies!  I’m angry!  I want to smash these pedestals into rubble!  I wonder if I just tip one over would they all come tumbling down like dominoes.  I wonder if this is a picture of what God did when he wrecked the idols of the Egyptians, one plague after another, until finally he knocked down the biggest “god”, Pharaoh, by killing his first born son.

I want to knock them down, but I can’t!  God please knock down these idols that have taken up residence in my heart.  And they all come tumbling down.  

Are there any heroes left?  I choose to keep my eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of my faith.  Some of Jesus’ closest followers were a bunch of anybodies.  The more they followed him, the more they began to look like him.  I look at those around me that remind me of him for encouragement.  Maybe they’re not so pretty and nobody knows their names, but they sure look a lot like what I really want to be like.  They look an awful lot like Jesus: a teacher that takes time and interest and prays for my kids; a woman who forgave her repentant husband and works to rebuild their marriage one trust at a time; a recovering alcoholic loving her family and trusting God to finish the healing he has started.

Years from now when somebody finds the ruins I leave behind I hope they can say,
“She looked like Jesus.”

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We believe that we are all called to follow hard after Jesus just like the first twelve he called in the region of Galilee.  As disciples we are called to edify God in all we do and say, to love him above all else.