Behold your god

And what situation comedy teaches us about life

I’m writing a series of devotionals on the Ten Commandments for I don’t know who, and in time for I don’t know what. But I just wrote one on the the first commandment that feels right to share here on Cary’s Almanac during Lent.

Moses repeated the commandments to the people, detail by a Carolingian book illuminator circa 840

In case you needed reminding, the first commandment from Exodus 20:3 is this:

You shall have no other gods before Me.

Let’s start with sitcoms, since that’s what I spend a lot of time thinking about.

Have you ever wondered why a sitcom episode takes place over a couple of days, maybe three at the most? It is because the characters must be placed under pressure. The episode does not begin with a character agreeing to have their boss over for dinner in a month’s time. It begins with a character realising they invited their boss over to dinner a month ago and completely forgot about it. It’s tonight! They are now thrown into crisis-mode, which is how it gets funny.

We also discover what the characters are afraid of. They don’t want to look silly or incompetent in front of their boss; they are worried about the offence they will cause if the house isn’t perfect; they are disappointed in themselves for this moral lapse; they resent the imposition on their time; or the power their boss has over them; they panic because they won’t be able to provide the stunning cuisine they long to serve up at such short notice.

These are all slightly different concerns, aren’t they? A character would only really be concerned about one of these, driving them to either stay up all night cleaning the house from top to bottom to make a good impression, or contrive a situation in which the boss has to uninvite himself and leave our hero free to watch TV on their own that night. Or they would max out their credit card at the most expensive food shop in town.

Behold, their true god is revealed.

If you respond to problems by asking “how is this going to look?”, your idol is pride. If you respond by worrying that this stress is going to make you sick, your idol may be health. If you respond to problems by asking “how can I fix this on my own?”, and working through the night, your idol is self-reliance. That’s me! So my career as a freelance writer suits me perfectly, because I can do what I want most of the time.

The problem with these idols is that they are good things in and of themselves. It’s good to have a good reputation, to be healthy and to work hard. Good food is a blessing from the Lord! It’s a noble thing to honour someone with a really special dish. But these desires control us and enslave us. They make us lose sight of what’s important.

This simple command lays us bare. We are to have no other gods before the Lord. It is not just that we want to keep our options open, like we saw last time. There is normally one particular thing we want above all other things: a good reputation or to be seen as a success; stability that comes through wealth or family; freedom to do whatever we want; the satisfaction of being the smartest in the room.

This is the season of Lent. Time to repent from idolatry. What is our idol? What is your besetting sin? How do you respond in a crisis? What are you most worried about in those moments? If your house were on fire and you could run in to save one item, what would it be? That item says an awful lot about what you hold most dear. And behold, your idol is revealed.

You will probably find this hard, because this idol has been lurking in your mind and your heart your whole life. It has become part of the operating system. Like fish not knowing they’re wet, you don’t realise that you tend to orient your life around this one thing. Others can probably see it. In fact, they might even make jokes about it – or have learned never to make jokes about it. They might have bought you gifts to either indulge it, or correct it.

Still reading?

If you’ve read this far, you probably are interested in a solution, even if the problem is still a little hazy. Likewise, the solution could be hazy. I could urge you to read the first commandment over and over again until you believe it and obey it. I could tell you to get into the habit of praying more often. Make it your first instinct when a problem arises, so you don’t turn first to your idol to fix it. But how do you do that? How can we make this more personal and more real?

In his gospel, Mark tells us about a rich man who goes up to Jesus and asks how he can inherit eternal life. He’s desperate to know, running up to Jesus and kneeling before him (Mark 10:17). Jesus asks him if he knows the commandments, reeling off a few from the second half of the list. The man knows them and says he has kept them since he was a boy.

The man sees himself as moral and good, and therefore not far from achieving eternal life. Jesus, however, highlights a fundamental problem linked to the fact that the first commandment is not mentioned in Jesus’s original list. That is the problem:

Jesus looked at him, loved him, and said to him, “There is one thing you lack: Go, sell everything you own and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.” (Mark 10:21)

If this man wants eternal life, he needs to follow Jesus. He is to have no other gods before Jesus. So what’s the one thing stopping him from doing that? His idol: wealth. Jesus, who loves him – in fact, because he loves him – tells him to let go of his wealth. The only way for the man to follow Jesus and inherit eternal life is to get rid of the thing that is enslaving him. Ouch.

Besetting Sins

How can we identify our besetting sin? We don’t need to do an Enneagram or Myers-Briggs Test. We need to talk to Jesus. The more time we spend in his presence, in prayer and reading his Word, the more his Spirit will convict us of our idolatry. And, marvellously, the Spirit will change us to be more like Christ himself.

At the moment, Stoicism is very popular, because much of it sounds Christian, but doesn’t require full submission to Christ himself. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus says, “You become what you give your attention to.”

He’s not wrong. We should pay attention to Christ. The man did not. Mark reports:

The man was saddened by these words and went away in sorrow, because he had great wealth. (Mark 10:22)

Let us leave all our treasure at the foot of the cross of Christ and marvel at our Saviour.