Reflection
Enlightenment is the ability to see beyond all the things we make God to find God. We make religion God and so fail to see godliness where religion is not, though goodness is clear and constant in the simplest of people, in the remotest of places. We make national honor God and fail to see the presence of God in other nations, particularly non-Christian nations. We make personal security God and fail to see God in the bleak and barren dimensions of life. We make our own human color the color of God and fail to see God in the one who comes in different guise. We give God gender and miss the Spirit of God present everywhere and in everyone. We separate spirit and matter as two different things …We are one with the Universe…not separate from it or different from it.…To be enlightened is to see beyond the forms to the God who holds them in being.
Joan Chittister, OSB
Prayer
Come Holy Spirit, enlighten our minds and open our hearts.
Action
What are the things that I “make God” in my life? How can I achieve a whole perspective and let go of my delusions?
Suggested Reading
I am the Lord your God. You shall not have strange gods before me.
Exodus 20:2 -17
Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived.
Deuteronomy11:16
The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose.
Pope Francis
Our age is one in which men have turned away from the eternal God of the universe, and decided to worship at the shrine of the god of nationalism.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
What we need to affirm is that Jesus is neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Whenever we marry Jesus to a political party, we are committing the sin of idolatry. We are making Jesus into the image of our political party.
Tony Campolo
You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
Anne Lamott
Security is a false God. Begin to make sacrifices to it and you are lost.
Paul Bowles
Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.
Gilbert Chesterton
Whatever controls us is our lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by acceptance. We do not control ourselves. We are controlled by the lord of our lives.
Rebecca Pippert
The secret to change is always to identify and dismantle the basic idols of the heart.
Tim Keller
There is a danger in monotheism, and it’s called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine.
Karen Armstrong