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Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Idols


"A great God is the Lord,
  over the gods like a king."
                        Psalm 95

The Lord is over all the other gods. That was from the days when people had all kinds of gods. We don't think that way any more.

But don't we? Any time we think we are so different from the people who went before us, I get suspicious. So I ask myself, do I have any of those other gods ruling parts of my life? Not all of it, just parts?

They say that the fundamental religious question is: Why get out of bed in the morning? Maybe another religious question is, "What will control my life today?

I reflected on my years of teaching. That was easy. What controlled my day was the goal of excellence. I had to come up with original, creative, remarkable insights for every moment I was in front of a class. There was fear involved. I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to do it.

Then when the teaching day ended, something else controlled my day: the idea of leisure. I would have time to do anything I wanted.

The best day of the year for me was always the day in May when I turned in the grades for the semester's classes. Three whole months of leisure! It couldn't get any better than that.

All that was years ago. I'm retired. What controls my life today?

Scheduled events. Mass I am scheduled to preside at. I must preach creatively, with remarkable insight. The same is true for every other thing on my schedule. I must be excellent.

Excellence is an idol for me. It controls me. I sacrifice to it. I fear terrible things if I fail to measure up to its demands.

Leisure is still my other idol. When I see a day on my schedule when I don't have to do absolutely anything, I rejoice. But when the day comes, I flounder around. I worry that I am not using that wonderful time well. I can't believe that I'm looking around for things to do. Something is wrong with me. Maybe Leisure is still ruling my days.

It was a few days ago that I began thinking about Excellence and Leisure as my idols. When Excellence loomed up before me, I thought: "Wouldn't it be better with the Lord as my lord?" It was a remarkably freeing experience. Suddenly the day seemed more free, more open to how other people might intrude into my schedule.

When I was letting Excellence rule my life, every person was a potential intrusion. I kept my office door open, but I really hoped no one would walk through it. Eventually people must have realized that, because few people did.

A close friend of mine is in full agreement with me when I say that the most important thing in my life is my schedule. I never realized that behind my schedule are lurking at least two demons: Excellence, and Leisure.