Idolatry is easy. Humans turn created things (or those things which are not God) into objects of worship quite naturally. We devote our lives to success, wealth, power, or even our own kids rather than to the God who created us and sent his son to die for us. We place pastors, politicians, athletes and celebrities on pedestals of undo height and glory. We make gods of mere mortals.

In the Bible, idolatry is the sin that infuriates God the most, and is the one by which he is most confounded. Isaiah expresses God’s consternation over idolatry this way:

[Wood] is man’s fuel for burning;

       some of it he takes and warms himself,

       he kindles a fire and bakes bread.

       But he also fashions a god and worships it;

       he makes an idol and bows down to it.
Half of the wood he burns in the fire;

       over it he prepares his meal,

       he roasts his meat and eats his fill.

       He also warms himself and says,

       “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.”
From the rest he makes a god, his idol;

       he bows down to it and worships.

       He prays to it and says,

       “Save me; you are my god.”
They know nothing, they understand nothing;

       their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see,

       and their minds closed so they cannot understand.
No one stops to think, 

       no one has the knowledge or understanding to say,

       “Half of it I used for fuel;

       I even baked bread over its coals,

       I roasted meat and I ate.

       Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left?

       Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”

Nothing makes less sense to God than idolatry, and yet this is the sin his people committed again and again. As early on as the Exodus, the Israelites fashioned a golden calf (perhaps to resemble a god they had worshipped while in Egypt) and bowed down to it. When they entered the promised land they added the idols of the Canaanites—Baal, Asherah, Molech—to their own worship. Idolatry (which God understood as adultery against himself) was the reason for the demise of Israel. It was because of their idolatry that the Northern Kingdom was destroyed and the Southern Kingdom sent into exile.

In the New Testament, Paul laments the idolatry he finds rampant among all the peoples of the earth. He writes in Romans:

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Idolatry is a problem for all mankind. It’s in our fallen nature to worship that which is not God. Even today there is unfettered idolatry running loose among churchgoers. We worship the gods of success and power just like the ancients, though perhaps more insidiously because we wrap it up in our Christianity. We turn our pastors and politicians into gods and place upon them all the expectations and demands of deity. Our idolatry grieves God no less today than it did when the stories of the Bible were being lived in the dust and grass of Palestine. The saddest irony, of course, is that when God did become a man—the one man worthy of worship—we rejected and killed him.

I urge you to examine your own heart to discern who and what has your central devotion rather than God. Who sits upon the throne of your soul? There is only one who is worthy to sit on that great seat—he who created you and knows you from first to last. Idolatry is easy. True worship of the true God is hard. Do the hard stuff.

At dia•spora, our ministry for young adults and young families, we do a Q&A session at the end of the service. The people who come to the gathering are really smart and ask great questions, so I’m really looking forward to not being on the panel eventually! Because they ask such good questions, we don’t have time to get to them all. But we do try to follow up on our ministry blog with responses to all the unanswered questions. Here’s one that I tried to answer.

“Are you against waiting on Gods confirmation to make a decision? I am not against stepping out in faith just because casting lots isn’t the way to go anymore. But I absolutely respect people that are able s to sit, wait, and pray for God to make his will known.”

I don’t think anybody would be against waiting on God’s confirmation to make a decision. The question is, How does that confirmation come about? In what form does God deliver his answer? Is it an audible voice, or perhaps a voice in your head? Scripture? Through friends? A miraculous sign? A word from the Lord through a pastor? A general sense or feeling?

There are some forms of confirmation that are more reliable than others, and the trick is learning to hear God’s voice through the static and noise of your own selfish desires and the conventional wisdom of our culture. I could tell you plenty of embarrassing stories of what I thought was God’s confirmation but turned out to be something entirely different. (Thankfully, I was never the guy that told a near stranger, “God told me to marry you.” But it happens, and, please, don’t be that guy.)

When you’re seeking God’s confirmation on a major decision in your life, here’s my advice:

1. Pray. Invite God into the decision making process. Ask him to bring clarity and wisdom.
2. Read the Bible and look for principles to guide your decision. But when you go to the Scriptures it’s very important that you be humble. Remember, you’re not Moses or David or Paul. But God’s principles that guided their life are the same principles that ought to guide yours.
3. Talk to people with more life experience than you. Chances are that someone else has been down this road before you, and they’ve got a great perspective to offer you. Who knows, maybe God will speak to you through the wise counsel of your elders.
4. Talk to your friends who know you well, and invite them to be brutally honest with you. Find people who will tell you the truth and tell them about the choice at hand. A good friend is someone who will tell you when you’re being ridiculous and who will encourage you when you’re being smart.
5. Use the wisdom that God has given you from the previous experiences of your life. Look back at the story God has been writing through your life, and let that be an element to consider how he might be continuing the story.

I’ll leave you with one final thought: God moves at his own pace. Be sure that you’re walking with him, not running ahead or lagging behind. And, given our culture, it’s likely that we’re trying to go faster than God is willing to move. So be patient. God’s going to go as fast as God’s going to go, and there’s nothing you can do about that. Remember, you’re not that important, and God dearly loves you.

Some Chinese evangelicals claim to have found Noah’s Ark. We’ve seen this sort of thing before, but these folks actually seem to have some evidence. Check out the video on ABC’s site (and ignore they obvious condescending tone if it offends you) and see for yourself.

If this is Noah’s Ark, what would that mean for your faith? Would you have a greater sense of trust in Scripture?

For me, I don’t know that it would do much more than to bring a massive smile to my face. To be alive when a major element of biblical history is found is a very cool thing, and if this is Noah’s Ark, then we are living in a special time. But as for my faith and my view of Scripture? I don’t know that those would change much. Hard evidence never seems to do for faith what we always hope it will do.

Stephen Hawking recently made a documentary in which he declares that aliens probably exist and it would be better for us if we didn’t make contact with them. He says that there are 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars, creating the potential for an absurdly large amount of planets, some of which could be hospitable to life, even intelligent life. The odds, he says, are for it.

Growing up I was always afraid that, if aliens existed, that must mean that God couldn’t. I’m not sure why those dots were connected in my mind, but I thought that the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe was a slam dunk case against the existence of God. It would certainly mean that humans aren’t special, and if we’re not special, then don’t all of Jesus’ claims fall apart? It’s a slippery slope, you see.

I may be speaking from a position of ignorance (I’m not a scientist), but I thought the probability of evolution (from single-cell organisms to intelligent beings) was as close to mathematically impossible as you can get. Operating from that assumption, it occurred to me that the existence of intelligent life somewhere else in the universe, rather than being the final nail in the coffin of theism, would actually be the greatest proof that there is a Creator. Surely something mathematically impossible couldn’t happen twice (or more) without outside intervention.

Of course this is all light-hearted speculation, but what if aliens showed up and, after learning to communicate with each other, we discovered that they have a tradition very much like our Jesus-tradition? What if their stories mirror our own? What if they told us of a God who Created everything and then, when it all went wrong, became one of the creatures in order to set everything right? Isn’t that at least just as likely as them coming to blow us up and take all the resources of our planet?

As I continue to reflect on Adam McHugh’s book Introverts in the Church, I find myself thinking about the ways in which introverts express their spirituality. All of us tend to live out our faith along a spectrum of doing and being. At one end of the spectrum are those who follow Jesus primarily in an action-oriented, activity-focused manner. They are the doers. At the other end of the spectrum are those who follow Jesus primarily in a contemplative, insight-focused way. They are the be-ers.

I call this a spectrum because most of us (if not all) are somewhere between the two extremes, and we move along the spectrum according to the seasons and rhythms of life. Sometimes we need to be doers, and other times we need to be be-ers. In general, extroverts tend to be doers, and introverts tend to be be-ers. (I have no empirical data to back up this claim. I’m making it simply on my own observations of people.)

As an introvert, I am much more comfortable on the being side of the spectrum. It’s slower, quieter, and allows time for the internal processing that goes on inside me. There are seasons of life, however, that call me out of a state of being and to the faster-paced, more active lifestyle of doing. But I have to be aware that this is what’s going on because I don’t naturally move into that mode–and when I don’t recognize it, I get overwhelmed, flustered, and just want to drop everything and leave it all behind. Knowing the transitions of seasons helps me to stay centered and persevere through the times of increased activity.

Extroverts, I imagine, would get bored and restless as the rhythms of life transition into a time of being. The stillness, slowness, and quiet of the being times would probably feel like anything but rest. God, no doubt, has orchestrated life to have these seasons and rhythms for very important reasons, and we would do well to understand what those are.

God may bring along a season of doing for introverts in order to pull them out of the limitations of their private world. If I had my own way, I would spend most of my time by myself reading or hiking through the mountains snapping photos. But as reviving as that is for me, to do it all the time severely limits how effective I will be for God’s kingdom. I need to be called out of my life of contemplation and study in order to engage the world I have been called to live in and minister to.

For extroverts, God may bring a season of being so that they can slow down and reflect on God and themselves. The rhythm of being is an opportunity to more deeply contemplate what God is doing, why he is doing it, and how he wants you to learn and grow. This is a time of self-discovery, as well as the chance to quiet the noise of life and tune your ears to the voice of God.

Life is complicated, and it seems like it’s changing all the time. A new season. A new rhythm. Greater expectations. Less responsibility. The ebb and tide of urgency. Consider where God has you on the spectrum of doing and being. If it’s an unnatural place for you, ask God to open your eyes and prepare your heart to do or be the best you can during this season.