Idols

There are probably a thousand things I’d like to blog about. Partly because I’m interested in a variety of things, but mostly because if I’m blogging, I’m focusing on worldly things and that’s a great deal easier than the alternative. Part of the reason I like to blog is to maintain more of a connection to the outside world – I’m a web developer with a home office. It can be very isolated. I also wanted to improve my writing, and if you want to be a better writer, you need to write more. Writing is also how I “process” things – I find it very helpful to write in order to clarify my thinking on a topic. I can’t do much to support the war effort, but being part of the huge chorus of people who do – 101st Keyboardists, Chairborne Division – is at least something, however small. So I have many reasons for wanting to blog, some better than others.

After the visitor count exceeded 4,000 a month, I became far too interested in the stats. Even accounting for the fact that many people come here looking for porn – no, really - I was a bit too excited about traffic and getting linked to by bigger bloggers from time to time.

My spiritual life – and I think this is true for most people – ebbs and flows. When I started this blog, I was so thrilled with what God was showing me every day. That was almost exclusively what I wrote about. These days, not so much… I’ve been building my house on the sand. I wrote in “Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Not Political Parties” that excessive partisanship, and excessive interest in politics is a sign of Christian immaturity for the simple reason that all of this is temporary.

When I sit in church listening to a great sermon and find myself thinking about a blog post, I know there is a problem. In many ways this blog has become an idol for me. What is an idol? This Sovereign Grace sermon series (audio, notes) on idolatry explains.

“An idol is something within creation that is inflated to function as God. All sorts of things are potential idols, depending only on our attitudes and actions toward them…Idolatry may not involve explicit denials of God’s existence or character. It may well come in the form of an over-attachment to something that is, in itself, perfectly good…An idol can be a physical object, a property, a person, an activity, a role, an institution, a hope, an image, an idea, a pleasure, a hero – anything that can substitute for God.”
– Richard Keyes

So I’m going to be spending less time on the temporary, and a lot more time on things that are eternal.