God likes to remind me when I am putting my faith in something or someone other than him. As I’ve heard Father Mike Schmitz say, “We are wired for idolatry,” and it often seems as though every time I’m making steady progress in my relationship with God, I find a new false idol to give my attention to. This inevitably leads to unhappiness and disappointment, and I turn back to God for help. 

I don’t know how many times I need it to be proven to me that God is God and everything and everyone else is not, but it seems as though I never fully learn this lesson. There’s always one more distraction and one more hope, followed by one more messy let down. 

And I know it’s no one else’s fault. I can’t blame them. They are not asking to be God. I put them in that position. I set them up to fail me by having expectations that only God can meet and then I’m somehow surprised when humans prove to be human. 

There’s a reason Jesus’s said the first and greatest commandment is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37-38, NIV). Even though he then tells us to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:39), this commandment comes second for a reason. God will never let us down, but other people will. 

When I make for myself false idols, God allows it. He doesn’t like it and he warns against it, but he allows it because, even though he wants us to choose him, he never stops us from using our free will. If we want to choose to worship something or someone other than God, God won’t stop us. He will remove his grace and protection from us when we turn away from him, however. 

Even though I know God never stops loving me, I have experienced times when I could feel his absence in my life. It usually happens when I turn my back on him or put something else before him. The funny thing is that God never went anywhere. It was I who cut myself off from his presence. 

All he asks is that I repent. That is, that I turn back to him with a contrite heart. When I do, having been let down by the world once again, he is always there to welcome me home. I don’t do this to test him. It’s more like I have a short memory. I forget what it’s like to be alone in the wilderness, outside of his protection. So I test it out again and am reminded of the pain and misery that led me to him in the first place. 

If only I never turned away, but the serpent of temptation comes in many forms. The devil has many faces and many voices, and he is a persistent trickster. He makes great promises that appeal to my pride, vanity, and fear, and he convinces me that I don’t need God this time, again, and it’s a lie. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

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