Dig
Uncovering the Idols that Control Our Choices
Chapter 1. The Idol of Self(ie)
“The first thing to do in examining the power that dominates me is to take hold of the unwelcome fact that I am responsible for being thus dominated. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because at a point way back I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because I have yielded myself to Him.” – Oswald Chambers
Can I ask a hard question?
What does it say about the state of our humanity when one of the most common daily activities in our culture is to take a picture of ourselves doing something like sitting in a car (#shenanigans) or standing in the bathroom (#progress)?
Maybe you’re thinking this doesn’t sound like you, and maybe you’re not the shirtless bathroom selfie person, and maybe you’re not the “wow, I’m having a great hair day let me take a picture of myself and post it” person, but before you dismiss this, look through your social posts and ask yourself these questions:
- Who is the focus of the post?
- What value does it offer?
- And most importantly, why did you post it?
In discussing these questions with others about their social posts, the discoveries have been highly consistent.
- We are the focus of our posts.
- Our posts typically offer little value to the world outside the perceived value for ourselves (e.g. influencer benefits, intrinsic validation, marketing, ego, etc.).
- When asked, “Why did you post it?”, the most common answers were clothed in extended silences and “I don’t knows”, though the most transparent among those asked were willing to say things like, “I thought I looked good,” or “I wanted people to know what I was doing” or “I’m addicted to the hearts”.
Even in our thinly veiled expressions of gratitude (#blessed), the message we share with the world is what we have been able to experience, accomplish, or receive but framed within a context of gratitude so as to not be perceived as boastful.
I wonder what people in the early 1800s would think of us.
In truth, they may be most interested by indoor plumbing, but once that wore off, they would certainly get around to wondering why we spend so much of our time positioning and repositioning our plates of food for photo ops (#keto). Why we pose seven different ways while in front of something as majestic as the Niagara Falls. How we can sit inside a historic castle for a once in a lifetime meal by a Michelin-rated chef and miss the magic of it because we can’t stop taking pictures of ourselves at the table.
Our obsessions with ourselves are unmatched.
Did our ever-self-gratifying culture create self-obsessed people or is our erroneous humanity to blame for creating an “all about me” culture?
I’m not entirely sure it matters.
What matters is where we are, what it produced, and thereby what it reveals. And that is the ugly truth that what we worship now, more than ever, is the Idol of Self(ie).
The “why” behind this phenomenon would be an interesting topic to dissect, but more relevant to this project is how this particular idol affects certain areas of our lives, and most especially, how it impacts our daily lifestyle choices.
There is not an area of our lives the worship of self(ie) does not touch. It bleeds into our relationships, affects how we relate to our communities, and what amount of time and energy we put into our social media accounts. It controls how we spend our time, money, and gifts, and changes how we see the world around us (or don’t see the world around us, as the case may be). Moreover, the Idol of Self(ie) has a lot more to do with our food, movement, and technology choices than we ever thought.
RELATIONSHIPS
The challenge with the Idol of Self(ie) informing our moment-by-moment decisions is that it cannot be kept from impacting our relationships. Every relationship, from spouse, to friend, to child, to sibling, to coworker, to neighbor, to even strangers in the community will be affected by our choice to worship ourselves before anything else.
What message do we communicate to our spouses when our needs rule? What do we communicate to our children? How does the ‘me god’ affect the community member in the parking lot at the grocery store? The neighbors who needs help with their house?
I imagine if you live with or love someone who commonly worships the Idol of Self(ie), it is very easy for you to point out how his/her worship of the ‘me god’ expresses itself.
But what if the ‘me god’ worshiper is you?
Grab your pearls, bootstraps, and cell phones, because y’all, it’s us. It’s you and it’s me. There is not a one who escapes it.
I promised you we would be looking in the mirror, and I must, along with you. If we are to dethrone the ‘me god’ we must first choose to acknowledge its reign.
In order to make this tangible, let’s take a moment, each in our own realities and truths, to honestly consider how many decisions we make in a day for ourselves. It may be helpful to talk about these questions with a trusted friend, spouse, accountability partner, tablemate, or in quiet reflection.
How many times today did you move forward without waiting on someone? Whether in line, in your car, in conversation, or in action, this could express itself in cutting someone off while driving, not waiting to hold a door for someone, not allowing someone to step in front of you, or (really think about this one) cutting someone off in conversation, not letting someone finish sentences, talking over people, or listening only so you can have a turn to speak.
How many times today did you choose for what you want, rather than what someone else needed? That could be time related; money related; or relationship related. Did you choose to watch television when someone needed help with a task? Did you rush someone through a conversation who needed to talk? Did you ignore your spouse’s or child’s need to connect because you needed ‘me time’? Did you stay in a relationship that needs to end because you need the perceived safety of it? Did you make a financial spend, or a time spend for yourself when it could have been invested in someone who needed it more?
Where, in your relationships, is the ‘me god’ controlling your choices? And how is that impacting your connection with those who matter most to you?
RESOURCES
The Idol of Self(ie) not only impacts our relationships, but it also dictates how we spend time, resources, money, and our gifts and talents.
This is a blistering activity, but the most effective awareness challenge for understanding the extent to which the Idol of Self(ie) rules our resources is to document, for a week, everything on which we spend time and money.
Make two columns, one for each resource: Time and Money. When you wake up, start actively identifying, hour by hour, how you spend your daily allotment of time; and how you choose to spend your money.
This is a powerful (and undeniable) revelation of what we truly value, and it is essential to understanding the truth about what we really worship. I implore you not to pass through this chapter without doing this exercise. It’s really hard, but it’s a great way to make this concept practical and to help us see, with clear eyes, where we are investing our most valued resources.
When we are worshipping the ‘me god’, money, time, talents, and resources are spent on things for ourselves. We use our natural gifts for our own advancements instead of serving our communities. We invest energy in ways to be entertained, feel happy and satisfied, and experience things which thrill us. We spend money on things that help us perceive ourselves as relevant, significant, attractive, or influential.
None of these things are evil in and of themselves, but when we regularly spend resources gifted to us on our own happiness, satisfaction, excitement, entertainment, and fulfillment, we are consistently and actively worshipping the Idol of Self(ie). Repeated resource spends toward the ‘me god’ set us up to expect elevated levels of happiness, satisfaction, excitement, and so on, all the time, thereby setting unrealistic expectations and properly invoking the Law of Diminished Return (i.e., the more you have something or do something, the less satisfying it is).
And it’s relevant to note that these resources are effectively gifted to us. They are not ours.
Dr. Tim Keller does an efficacious job of explaining this truth in saying that we did not choose when we would be born. We didn’t choose our gender, race, or heritage. We didn’t choose our parents, our athletic ability, our intellectual ability, or our academic ability. We didn’t choose to have or not have artistic ability. We didn’t choose to have limbs that work, or eyes that work, or ears that work. We didn’t choose to be born into money or not be born into money. Though we have the duty and responsibility to properly steward the gifts we were given by working hard and protecting and refining them, none of us have what we have by our own rights, abilities, or wishes.
Our resources are not our own, and somewhere along the line, the ‘me god’ convinced us they were.
When the Idol of Self(ie) rules, it is the absolute puppet master, determining how we interact with the people we love and how we spend the resources we have. And if this is true, the Idol of Self(ie) cannot be exempt from affecting our daily lifestyle choices. If it has enough control to affect our relationships and our resources, it would be naïve of us to believe that it doesn’t affect our food, movement, and technology choices as well.
MOVEMENT
Consider movement. The number one reported reason for not getting physical activity in a day is a lack of time. If we refer back to the value challenge and break down a day by the hour to discover how we’re spending time, most of us would find there’s ample time being devoted to the Almighty Screen that could be moved over to physical activity.
The value challenge is hard to ignore here. If we value the screen more than physical activity, our time will be spent in front of it – it’s as simple as that. It’s here, also, that the ‘me god’ is in control. We choose an activity that caters to our perceived needs/desires before we choose for stewardship of the body. In isolated incidents, this may not have a large impact, but when the Idol of Self(ie) rules, we will consistently choose to sit in front of the screen before we care for our bodies. That’s when patterns emerge, and we habitually move for the spot on the couch without even thinking about it. It calls to us with a comfort, a satisfaction, an ease that wins over all else and before we know it, hours of our lives have passed in passive, sedentary, consumption. And with the quality of what we consume through the screen these days, chances are we are not only neglecting our bodies movement, but we are simultaneously consuming television, socials, and other media that is actively filling our minds, hearts, and souls with things that are dark. Now a missed opportunity to steward our bodies with movement has also become a punishment for our souls, hearts, and minds – and we call it entertainment.
But what would happen if the Idol of Self(ie) is not in control in the moment when we make this movement choice?
It may feel impossible to move and expend energy after a long day of work or maintaining the house and kids, but the expenditure of energy almost always produces energy, and only one or two tries at this theory will prove itself true.
It’s reported that only 21% of adults in the US go to a gym on a regular basis. If that’s true, we need a movement solution that will work for the other 79% of the population. Going to the gym to sweat next to forty shiny strangers isn’t the majority’s cuppa tea, so we can release the perceived obligation that proper movement or exercise has to happen in spandex, inside a health club, on an iffy-smelling yoga mat. It doesn’t. Daily movement can be achieved in so many ways and it doesn’t have to feel like punishment and taste like protein drinks.
Let’s consider a few movement choices that are outside a gym, away from a screen, and which hold higher purposes than simply burning calories…
A family walk after dinner invites purposeful communication with each other that we don’t achieve while watching the screen. A walk while calling a friend, a bike ride around the block to pray for neighbors, tending a community garden… all of these things move our bodies while also developing our social, spiritual, or emotional health. What if we spent that screen time volunteering somewhere – sorting food and clothing, making soap, feeding the homeless? All of these things are moving with purpose – not just for a healthier body, but a healthier family, a healthier community, a healthier mental, emotional, and spiritual health. And – bonus – studies have shown mindless eating skyrockets while eating in front of a TV, so stepping away from the screen may also save us loads on calories.
These kinds of choices slay the ‘me god’ to the ground. These are active choices to move our bodies and do so in a way that edifies us and the world around us. These are spiritual battles as well as physical battles and I’m not convinced the two can be separated.
The best part of all – this is not an unattainable goal.
It’s one choice, deliberately made, that impacts our holistic health and potentially the health of our families and communities. I invite you to think on these things with me; pray over them; and if you feel moved to do something about your movement choices, find an accountability partner who will hold you to your commitment. (And don’t pick an accountability partner who is nice. Pick someone who is honest.)
FOOD
Let’s consider food in relation to the Idol of Self(ie).
At some point in our history, food became an idol in and of itself and a later chapter will discuss this in more depth. But right now let’s talk about how the ‘me god’ affects our food choices.
Our ancestors hunted and gathered food to survive. They ate to live. They ate what was available, what they could find, what they could grow, or what they could kill – and in all these cases, they had to move their bodies in order to do it. We live in a time when we don’t have to move to get our food. Not only that, but food has changed from a life supply and energy source to an art, a way to celebrate, a means through which to draw people together, or a method for processing emotions. In short, it’s used for everything but its principle purpose – fuel.
Here’s a simple application for further understanding how this plays out in our day-to-day choices:
When you peruse a menu, do you search for what “sounds good” or what will fuel your body well? Do you ask yourself, “what do I want?”, or do you consider what will steward the gift of your body in the most effective way?
In the health and wellness field a car analogy is often used to help individuals better understand this principle of ‘feel’ versus ‘fuel’.
Pretend your body is a luxury sports car. Would you use diesel fuel to fill up or would you use premium? Gas engines can’t combust diesel fuel, and if you consistently use it to fill up your luxury car, after a while, it will no longer run. Even consistently using regular fuel in a luxury car will cause a plethora of problems, which would eventually lead to a need for a new engine.
A luxury car requires premium fuel.
Likewise, by consistently choosing foods that “sound good” but may not be the right fuel for you, you are fueling your body with something that will cause your engine to eventually stop running. And with our bodies, we don’t have the option of purchasing a new one.
We are being ruled by the ‘me god’ in the moments when we say things like “I can eat/drink that because I earned it”; or “I deserve this because I got a promotion”; or “I put up with a lot this week so…”.
Our feelings, satisfaction, desires, or emotions are owning every decision we make as it relates to food. And can I remind you that I am no master at this? I write this wondering at my own paradoxical behavior choices – especially having spent over a decade in the field! Behavior change is so very difficult, and I write all of this as I continue to learn with you – not condemn you.
In the introduction, I talked about how if we redefine the game we’re playing, we may change our strategy and tactics and actually start to make some progress. This is where that starts to happen.
If we are eating not only to fuel our luxury cars, but also – no, primarily – as an act of worship, how does that change how we eat? How would it change how we move? How does it change how we interact with technology?
God gave us the gift of one body. I wonder, if in those oft occurring moments when we have a decision to make about what we order or how we spend our evenings, or if we exercise or not, or how much time we scroll through socials… I wonder what would change if we considered it an opportunity to worship God in place of the ‘me god’. I wonder how it would change our choices if we considered it an act of thanksgiving? How would your choices change if you considered your food choice, your movement choice, or your technology choice an active choice for stewardship – not unlike tithing.
More pointedly, let’s consider the internal dialogue at play here…
Option 1: “I want lose weight, look good, and be healthy so I’m going to choose…”
Option 2: “As a spiritual act of worship and thanksgiving to the God who gave me a working body, mind, spirit, and soul I’m going to choose…”
Which is more effective for you? Can you articulate why the one you chose is more effective than the other at driving you to actually make a healthful choice? What implications does this have on how you will choose tomorrow?
I invite you to reflect on the Oswald Chambers quote from the beginning of this chapter. By worshiping the Idol of Self(ie), we have become slaves to ourselves, our habits, our desires, our needs for satisfaction, our ever-changing emotions – and it’s no one’s fault but our own. Somewhere along the line we yielded to ourselves, which inevitably replaced our being yielded to God and His desires for us. And His desire for us is beautiful and worth pursuing.
“I came so that you may have life and live it abundantly.” John 10:10
In worshiping our own needs for satisfaction, fulfillment, and pleasure every facet of our lives is being affected from our relationships, to our actions, to our lifestyle choices. I can see it in my life, and maybe you have started to see it in yours too. By seeing our worship of ourselves for what it is and seeking to change it, we have the potential to improve our physical, emotional, social, mental, and spiritual health.
We’ll talk about how to begin addressing this practically later, but first, let’s confront a few more of our idols face-to-face.
Nic Ford