Confounded be all who worship carved images and delight in false gods!
Confounded. That’s another word we don’t use nearly enough. It seems like a word that was used in some Loony Toon cartoon. Elmer Fudd maybe? In any case, it’s a good word that describes me in my world oftentimes. The definition is to cause surprise or confusion by acting against expectations.
False gods are all those things other than God in which we put our trust. Fame, fortune, prestige, power, control. Even things that start as ‘good’, can turn into a false god, if they supplant God. Service, liturgy, worship, church, philanthropy, mission work.
If gods are external values or things, carved images are more internal; they’re things of our own making. I am exceedingly good at carving, of constructing an image of myself or my world that is in fact carved by me. Often these carved images are how I perceive my world, or how my world SHOULD operate.
My home world is pretty carved, and I didn’t even really know it. I have great self-imposed expectations about how everyone should behave, what everyone should do. My sick loved one cannot operate as they once did. Their behavior and thinking and language are hard to comprehend and frustrating for me. And I’m sure their behavior and thinking are even more hard to comprehend and frustrating for them.
Their presence is a great blessing; I’m grateful to be able to support them in their time of incredible illness. And it’s highlighting all the areas of my world where I was worshipping images I’d carved. I am in fact confounded, much of the time.
It’s very difficult to have these images of how I thought things should be dismantled. Whether it’s an image of my move-to-Portland-sell-the-car-play-with-my-husband self, or their life, or my spare time, or my dinner table peace – these are all images I’d created or carved that clearly I worshipped; I can tell because as they are dismantled, I’m hanging on desperately, worshipping the image.
None of this is to say that those images are wrong, or didn’t serve a purpose. And maybe originally, they were God-inspired. But now, I need to worship God, not the images I’d created at a time very different than now.
This morning, I’m begrudgingly grateful for the disruptions in my world, for my seemingly constant state of confoundedness. Feeling confounded at carved images that aren’t my current reality may be a great signal that those are images I shouldn’t be worshipping any longer. Today, I will try to recognize that my sense of being confounded is likely the result of my worshipping something of my making, not God’s.
No comments:
Post a Comment