The Trouble with Idols

You could scarcely hope to escape Taylor Swift while reading a blog with its title inspired by one of her songs. Really, it was only a matter of time til I wrote about another one of her chart toppers. These days, her song I Knew You Were Trouble is everywhere. Whether's it's the screaming goat version or the regular old music video, this song is currently inescapable.

In the song, Taylor describes a relationship that she knows is a bad idea from the start. But she enters the relationship anyway. Thus the music video is a mixture of the excitement that enticed her to begin the relationship and the desperation that followed its demise.

If it weren't so easy to relate with Taylor, it would indeed be much easier to be critical of her poor relationship choices. But I do believe that the prospect of red love can tend to bring out the fool in all of us. Thus, I think there's much we can learn about the darker, deceptive call of red love, our tendency toward idolatry, and our need for a savior simply by observing this song and video.

As you can see, Taylor wakes up alone in the middle of a desert wasteland. This opening is meant to no doubt fit with her lyric, "Now I'm lying on the cold, hard ground." Her monologue, though arguably poorly acted, contains the elements of a heartbreaking story and is only intensified by the ominous cello-like background accompaniment. And then right before the song starts, she says, "The worst part of it all wasn't losing him; it was losing me."  What a sad picture! This girl has lost her very self all in the pursuit of love. And what's worse is that you and I do the same thing. 

Though I don't think she meant to, Taylor has given us a glance into the heart of idolatry. You see, our hearts deceive us into thinking that worshiping idols will give us whatever it is we so desperately desire, since idols promise us the world, but in the end, they take everything from us, leaving us empty, vulnerable, and alone. 

When I say that we worship idols, what I mean is that we love other things, including relationships and the prospect of being loved, more than we love God. And God considers this spiritual adultery. As His people, He calls us His Bride, and He wants us to be faithful to Him. But we're not very good at that, and our sin often lands us in a place much like Taylor's has landed her - in a desert wasteland. 

Of course, Taylor's not the first to sing about the pain of "lying on the cold hard, ground." Natalie Imbruglia's smash hit from the late 90s, Torn, describes similar ill effects of a relationship in which she sings: "Nothing's fine. I'm torn. I'm all out of faith. This is how I feel. I'm cold and I am shamed lying naked on the floor. Illusion never changed into something real. I'm wide awake and I can see the perfect sky is torn." So our sin and foolishness not only lead us to make choices that leave us empty, vulnerable, and alone, but which leave us "torn" - hurt and damaged in the end. 

But the thing that's so great about the Lord is, unlike our idols, He doesn't just leave us there to die. Instead, He says of us, "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her" (Hosea 2:14). In that barren place where we've found ourselves broken and alone, God wants to speak sweetly to us to bring us back to Himself. Though the Lord has allowed these sad experiences to leave us "torn," He intends to heal us! And He wants us back! "Come let us return to the Lord for He has torn us, that He might heal us; he has struck us down, and He will bind us up" (Hosea 6:1). 

And He does more than just heal us. He enters into our brokenness. Jesus Himself was torn apart for our sake. On the cross, His flesh was torn - like the curtain that used to hang in the temple to prevent sinners from entering God's presence - so that there would be nothing that could separate us from Him ever again. (Hebrews 10:20).

So if God is obviously so much better than our idols, why do we still find ourselves easily caught in the troublesome web of idolatry? It's because our idols whisper "sweet nothings" in our ears. So as our idols become more and more attractive, we find it hard to believe that Satan is chiming in to tempt us with his ugly lies. Then we grow "tired of hope with nothing to hold" and start to wonder if the gospel, not the idol, is just the Sweet Nothing that Calvin Harris and Florence Welsh sing about. 

But we've got the situation reversed. In the midst of these temptations, we must remind each other that the promises of an idol are "empty air," but that the promises of the gospel are real. We need a call to stop embracing the "sweet nothing" of our idol, but to "hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful" (Hebrews 10:23). And we must remember that: "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). Though we may not currently have anything "to hold" or to show for the hope that we have in Jesus, we have the Spirit of God living inside of us as an assurance of the eternal inheritance that is waiting for us in Heaven. 

And we need people in our lives to help us see these things. So I have friends that I regularly check in with to ask them if I'm being a fool in my relationships. I will email, text, call, chat with them in person, really whatever it takes...just so I can ask them whether or not I'm being an idiot in a particular situation. And since my perceptions are typically backwards, they usually reassure me that I'm being wise when I'm feeling foolish (like when I feel incredibly stupid for still being single while putting my hope in the Lord and waiting for a particular type of man) or that I'm being foolish when I think I'm acting on wisdom (like when I let my desire for love start to make me think that maybe I could date a guy even though I haven't been impressed by his character).

Do you have friends like this? Friends you can trust, who will tell you the truth even if you don't want to hear it? Friends who want to see you trust and love Jesus more than they want you to just get what you want? Friends who know what the Bible has to say about wisdom, foolishness, and idolatry?

Because the truth is that idols promise everything, but only bring sadness and shame. They promise to give us all we've ever wanted, and for a while it looks like they can deliver, but they actually rob us of everything in the end. The opposite is true of the Lord. He asks us to surrender everything, and for a while it doesn't seem like we will have anything to show for it, but in the end we receive more than we could ever imagine - namely Jesus. He's the One who offers us true hope, healing, and the sweet realities of an eternity spent with Him.

Cuz Loving Him is Red.

Other thoughts on why our idols can be so deceptively enticing?

How else can we help each other remember that loving Jesus is better than worshipping idols?