When Idols Die.

It was difficult to get out of bed this morning. I wanted to stay asleep and not really believe what I had witnessed the night before. The pain was still too near. 12 hours ago I sat on the couch in my living room taking in the horror that was a New York Yankees defeat. The Yankees loss was not just a loss, it was a slaughter. Worse still it came at the hands of the Texas Rangers, who while not of par with the Boston Red Sox, were one team I did not want to see beat the Yankees lose to and inflate the already disproportionately large egos of Texas people. As I write this the Yankees have already won game five and still have a chance in the 2010 American League Championship Series, but hope still seems difficult to find. When I woke up this morning... one of my idols was about to die.

The language I use may seem harsh, but think about the idols in all our lives. An idol can be defined as something so important in our lives that, should we lose it, our life would feel hardly worth living (kudos to Tim Keller on providing a wonderful definition). Sports is a huge one. When I lived in the NYC area people would call the talk radio shows and complain for HOURS about how bad their sports teams were doing. If the Yankees, Mets, Jets, Giants, Knicks, Rangers, etc.... lost a game it was as if the whole city took a punch to the gut. The same thing was true when I lived in Denver and the Broncos lost. On Monday morning lots of people would call in sick because they had to recover fromt the loss. In the same vein, let's consider a variety of relationships. Right now I am sitting in a gelato cafe in Palo Alto, CA... minutes from the headquarters of one of the most powerful social networking sites in the world: Facebook. People will go into a state of depression once a relationship ends (Even if it is an unhealthy one). Additionally, people have no problem sitting on Facebook for hours hoping that someone will post on their wall, write them a message, IM them, etc.

Idols run rampant everywhere. I could offer more examples but you get the point. The other problem with idols is, even if we recognize them in our lives, most times we don't want to kill them. Idols have given us a false purpose or meaning. They offer promises they can't fulfill. For instance, I walked into this gelato shop tonite thinking that the creamy goodness would make me feel wonderful... then they tried to charge me 5.75 for a very small cup. Worse than Dippin Dots! Idols most times paralyze us from achieving the things we dream of, even were meant to do. Consider the porn addict, or the drug user who just can't stop, or the person who continues to fall into debt and cannot stop spending, or the person who feels like they need to be the savior in all the relationships they get into. Idols weaken us. They keep us from greatness. So why can't we just let idols die?

Today I made my second California off day adventure. I went to Stanford University in Palo Alto, hence why I am here. The campus is GORGEOUS. Palm trees line the main entrance. Either side of the road had open green areas. After I parked next to Foster Field I walked the campus, which was filled with historically spanish looking buildings that screamed education. I had to dodge the people on bikes... which seemed like everyone on campus! All this was as I made my way thru the history building, campus bookstore, and others so that I could find the "main quad." Once I finally found it after an hour of walking, I sat there and thought... "Wow! What life is here on this campus!"

Then I began to think back to my days of graduating high school and heading to college. I remember the youthful vigor that I had and a passion for changing the world and achieving my dreams. I still have many dreams and many things I want to do before the good Lord calls me home by his grace. But I couldn't help but think that I need to kill the idols in my life that are keeping me from living every second of every day for Jesus. Those 18-22 year olds at Stanford will experience the same thing. They will have to combat idols for the rest of their lives (especially if they are Christians and recognize that idols are bad). My hope and prayer is that they will work on killing their idols and letting them die. I want to kill mine so that Jesus has COMPLETE control of everything that I do.

Because the truth is: when idols die... then we can truly live.