1: Good question.
After all, “marriage can be the most intimate, the most satisfying, the most enduring, growth-producing of human relationships,” Stephen R. Covey writes in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
“It might seem natural and proper to be centered on one’s husband or wife.”
And, being a parent can be the most rewarding of all of life’s experiences. It is “as an area of focus and deep investment,” Stephen notes. “It provides great opportunities for deep relationships, for loving, for sharing, for much that makes life worthwhile.”
What could possibly be wrong about centering our lives around that?
The problem with making either our spouse or our family the center of our lives is that these relationships are, by definition, not permanent.
“If our sense of emotional worth comes primarily from our marriage, then we become highly dependent upon that relationship,” Stephen writes. “We become vulnerable to the moods and feelings, the behavior and treatment of our spouse, or to any external event that may impinge on the relationship—a new child, in laws, economic setbacks, social successes, and so forth.”
Centering our lives on our children “ironically destroys the very elements necessary to family success,” he observes.
“If we derive our own security from the family, our need to be popular with our children may override the importance of a long-term investment in their children’s growth and development.”
And, because these are human relationships, conflict is inevitable.
“When we are dependent on the person with whom we are in conflict, both need and conflict are compounded,” Stephen writes. “Love-hate over-reactions, fight-or-flight tendencies, withdrawal, aggressiveness, bitterness, resentment, and cold competition are some of the usual results.”
This type of strife or discord often continues to build. “Inevitably, anytime we are too vulnerable we feel the need to protect ourselves from further wounds,” he observes. “So we resort to sarcasm, cutting humor, criticism—anything that will keep from exposing the tenderness within.”
With children, we may “love [them] conditionally, making them emotionally dependent or counter-dependent and rebellious.”
2: Other people put money, career, pleasure, or even their church at the center of their lives.
“Sometimes there are apparently noble reasons given for making money, such as the desire to take care of one’s family,” Stephen writes. “And these things are important. But to focus on money-making as a center will bring its own undoing.”
Because money and professional achievement are also impermanent.
“Since many factors affect these economic foundations, we become anxious and uneasy, protective and defensive, about anything that may affect them,” Stephen writes. “When my sense of personal worth comes from my net worth, I am vulnerable to anything that will affect that net worth.”
Still, others put pleasure or self as the center of their lives. These, too, turn ruinous.
“But while the glitter of pleasure-centered lifestyles is graphically portrayed, the natural result of such lifestyles—the impact on the inner person, on productivity, on relationships—is seldom accurately seen. . . Too much undisciplined leisure time in which a person continually takes the course of least resistance gradually wastes a life.”
And church. How is it bad to put that at the center of their lives?
“Having participated throughout my life in organized church and community service groups, I have found that attending church does not necessarily mean living the principles taught in those meetings. You can be active in a church but inactive in its gospel,” Stephen observes.
3: Our spouse, our family, our work, money, pleasure, self-interest, and even our church can all become what the Bible calls “idols,” Tim Keller writes in his book Every Good Endeavor.
We make something an idol when we turn “a good thing into an ultimate thing,” Tim explains. “It means imagining and trusting anything to deliver the control, security, significance, satisfaction, and beauty that only the real God can give.”
This tendency to create idols in our lives is addressed in the First of the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3).
What precisely does it mean to have other gods?
“We have an alternate or counterfeit god if we take anything in creation and begin to ‘bow down’ to it—that is, to love, serve, and derive meaning from it more than from the true God,” Tim writes.
The great Christian thinker Martin Luther defined idolatry as “looking to some created thing to give us what only God can give us,” Tim notes. Setting up an idol and trying “to save ourselves through our own efforts—are describing essentially the same thing.”
Martin Luther writes: “If we presumptuously expect to please Him only through and after our works, then it is all pure deception, outwardly honoring God, but inwardly setting up self as a false god…”
As Paul walked around Athens, he saw that the “city was full of idols” (Acts 17:16).
“He was speaking of actual physical objects,” Tim writes, “but once we grasp the biblical definition of idolatry, we realize that every city and indeed every human heart is filled with idols. They are literally everywhere.”
Non-religious people may look for “favor, grace, and goodwill in the acquisition of power, or the experience of pleasure,” he notes, “while religious people may trust in their moral virtue or acts of devotion or ministry.
“But all are fundamentally the same inner transaction. In each case the heart is given to a counterfeit god.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: What are the idols in my life? Have I turned “a good thing into an ultimate thing”?
Action: Journal about my answers to the questions above.
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1 Comment
Love this! This really makes you do a heart check and get your priorities right.