An idol is any person, power, object, or spirit that you rely on instead of God for satisfaction, security, accomplishment, or honor. So how can we delight in the world around us \u2013 last night\u2019s moonrise, friendships that last for decades, clear crisp days abounding in fall colors, and so many more \u2013 without their becoming idols: the source of our satisfaction, our joy?<\/p>\n
In \u201cMeditation in a Toolshed<\/a>,\u201d C.S. Lewis provides us with an image that helps answer that question:<\/p>\n I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.<\/p>\n Then I moved so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.<\/p>\n John Piper uses this image to understand the opening verses of Psalm 19, explaining how we can avoid making an idol of the beauty of the heavens:<\/p>\n We can say that when we\u00a0\u2018look along\u2019\u00a0the heavens and not just\u00a0\u2018at\u2019\u00a0the heavens, they succeed in their aim of\u00a0\u2018declaring the glory of God.\u2019\u00a0That is, we see the glory\u00a0of\u00a0God<\/em>, not just the glory of the heavens. We don\u2019t just stand outside and analyze the natural world as a beam, but we let the beam fall on the eyes of our heart, so that we see the source of the beauty\u2014the original Beauty, God himself.<\/p>\n This is the essential key to unlocking the proper use of the physical world of sensation for spiritual purposes. All of God\u2019s creation becomes a beam to be\u00a0\u2018looked along\u2019\u00a0or a sound to be\u00a0\u2018heard along\u2019\u00a0or a fragrance to be\u00a0\u2018smelled along\u2019\u00a0or a flavor to be\u00a0\u2018tasted along\u2019\u00a0or a touch to be\u00a0\u2018felt along.\u201d All our senses become partners with the eyes of the heart in perceiving the glory of God through the physical world.<\/p>\n Rather than an idol \u2013 with our adoration focused on the object \u2013 we look along the object and adore the source of its beauty.<\/p>\n C.S. Lewis elaborates on this idea at length in Letters to Malcolm. <\/em>The author writes a letter to a friend who had influenced his view of the world around him. Anything in the world \u2013 including any pleasure in the world \u2013 is no idol if we look \u201calong\u201d it, up towards God Himself. This quotation helps us to do just that:<\/p>\n You first taught me the great principle, \u2018Begin where you are.\u2019 I had thought one had to start by summoning up what we believe about the goodness and greatness of God, by thinking about creation and redemption and\u2019 all the blessings of this life\u2019. You turned to the brook and once more splashed your burning face and hands in the little waterfall and said: \u2018Why not begin with this?\u2019<\/p>\n And it worked. Apparently you have never guessed how much. That cushiony moss, that coldness and sound and dancing light were no doubt very minor blessings compared with \u2018the means of grace and the hope of glory\u2019. But then they were manifest. So far as they were concerned, sight had replaced faith. They were not the hope of glory; they were an exposition of the glory itself.<\/p>\n Yet you were not \u2013 or so it seemed to me \u2013 telling me that \u2019Nature\u2019, or \u2018the beauties of Nature\u2019, manifest the glory. No such abstraction as \u2018Nature\u2019 comes into it. I was learning the far more secret doctrine that\u00a0pleasures\u00a0<\/em>are shafts of the glory as it strikes our sensibility. As it impinges on our will or our understanding, we give it different names-goodness or truth or the like. But its flash upon our senses and mood is pleasure\u2026.<\/p>\n I have tried, since that moment, to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don\u2019t mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I mean something different. How shall I put it?<\/p>\n We can\u2019t \u2013 or I can\u2019t \u2013 hear the song of a bird simply as a sound. Its meaning or message (\u2018That\u2019s a bird \u2018) comes with it inevitably-just as one can\u2019t see a familiar word in print as a merely visual pattern. The reading is as involuntary as the seeing. When the wind roars I don\u2019t just hear the roar; I \u2018hear the wind\u2019. In the same way it is possible to \u2018read\u2019 as well as to \u2018have\u2019 a pleasure. Or not even \u2019as well as\u2019. The distinction ought to become, and sometimes is, impossible; to receive it and to recognise its divine source are a single experience. This heavenly fruit is instantly redolent of the orchard where it grew. This sweet air whispers of the country from whence it blows. It is a message. We know we are being touched by a finger of that right hand at which there are pleasures for evermore. There need be no question of thanks or praise as a separate event, something done afterwards. To experience the tiny theophany [that is, \u2018manifestation of God\u2019] is itself to adore.<\/p>\n Gratitude exclaims, very properly: \u2018How good of God to give me this.\u2019 Adoration says: \u2018What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations [\u2018flashes of brilliance\u2019] are like this! \u00a0One\u2019s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.<\/p>\n If I could always be what I aim at being, no pleasure would be too ordinary or too usual for such reception; from the first taste of the air when I look out of the window\u2013one\u2019s whole cheek becomes a sort of palate \u2013 down to one\u2019s soft slippers at bedtime….<\/p>\n One must learn to walk before one can run. So here. We-or at least I-shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have\u00a0found\u00a0<\/em>Him so, not have \u2019tasted and seen\u2019. Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are \u2018patches of Godlight\u2018 in the woods of our experience.<\/p>\n So I encourage you: Notice today something particular in the world around you \u2013 something pleasurable, beautiful, encouraging. By all means, thank God for it. But then look along the beam, up the beam, back to its source. And so adore the source. In doing so, you not only guard yourself against idolatry. You also fulfill the purpose of your creation.<\/p>\n [The Piper quote is from p. 185-186 of When I Don\u2019t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy <\/em>(Crossway, 2004). In addition to the link provided, the first C.S. Lewis excerpt is published on p. 212-215 of God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics <\/em>(Eerdmans, 1970). The second, longer C.S. Lewis quote is from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer <\/em>(Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1963-64), chapter 17, p. 88-93. For a longer exposition of this idea, see the April 6, 2014 sermon \u201cEnjoying What God Richly Provides\u201d \u00a0text<\/a>\u00a0audio<\/a>.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An idol is any person, power, object, or spirit that you rely on instead of God for satisfaction, security, accomplishment, or honor. 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