This is my final article spinning out of scenes
from the Christmas cult classic, A Christmas Story. The Old Man, the name given
to Ralphie’s father in the movie, entered a contest to win a prize. And he won!
The prize came in a giant box labeled “fragile.” Upon seeing “fragile” on the
box, the Old Man said, “Fra-gi-le. It must be Italian.” He was excited, barely
able to contain his excitement. He clamored to open up the box.
When all the packing materials were removed out
came a plastic leg. Not just your normal, everyday plastic leg. No, this leg was
a leg lamp with fish net stockings. The Old Man wanted to put it right in the
middle of the front room window, so that everybody going by the house could see
it. After positioning the lamp exactly where he wanted it, the Old Man exclaimed,
“Oh, look at that. Will you look at that? Isn’t that glorious? It’s indescribably
beautiful. It reminds me of the 4th of July!”
A little over the top. It’s easy for us to acknowledge
that the old man’s behavior when he opened the leg lamp was utterly ridiculous,
but we do the same thing. Only not with leg lamps. Our idols are much better
disguised.
John wrote one of my favorite letters and the
Bible. He concluded his letter, which we know as 1st John, with the statement
that we are to keep ourselves from idols. John’s letter emphasizes love. It is
one of the harshest letters in the Bible. Not because loving is harsh, but
because he tells us what is the punishment for not loving. In it we see John
tell the readers that if they don’t love the people around them then they don’t
love God. And if they don’t love God, God has no room for them in His family.
It seems a little weird for the letter to end in a
command to keep ourselves from idols when the rest of the letter didn’t even
talk about idols, but John knew what he was doing. We cannot properly love when
we have idols in our life. But let me clarify what an idol is. An idol doesn’t
have to be some gold statue or special relic from long ago. An idol is anything
that prevents us from focusing on what we’re supposed to be focused on.
This leads me to ask, “What is your leg lamp?”
What is your idol? What is it that you have in your life that you focus on,
that you find beautiful, and that really controls your life? Because if you are
focused on the wrong thing, then you have an idol. It doesn’t matter how good
that wrong thing is; if it’s not the right thing, then it’s an idol.
Let’s test it with a completely good thing, the Bible.
The Bible is a tool for us to get to know God. Unfortunately, I’ve seen many
people turn the Bible into an idol. It transforms from being a great tool to
show us God and relay His will for our life to being the end all of our faith.
When the Bible becomes more important than Jesus—when the Bible becomes more important
than loving our neighbor—when knowledge of the Bible becomes an end to itself,
we have missed the point. We have turned the word of God, which we are so
richly blessed with, into an idol.
Now if this can happen with the word of God, then
it can also happen to anything else in our life. We have to be careful.
The idols in our life don’t come wrapped in a
giant box and appear to be a useless leg lamp. The tricks Satan uses on us and
our own self-deception are more covert than that.
Jesus came into this world, as we remember this time of year,
to free us from sin. We might not have a leg lamp, but I guarantee that we do
have idols. As John concluded in his letter, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21 ESV).
