America needs a Savior, not an idol.

But idols are so much fun to make, and they are so pretty, and have a piece of us in them.

The success of American Idol is amazing. It dawned on me that American Idol is not unlike the calf in the wilderness. While Moses was away, the people decided that they needed something tangible to worship, so they melted down their gold and made a cow, of all things.

We are created to worship something bigger than ourselves. We can’t escape it, it is built in. I think that is another way of describing the “God shaped hole” or vacuum or whatever it is. We were created to worship and fellowship with a big God.

And when we don’t put our worship on God, we have to find something else bigger than ourselves to worship. And that is our idol. I think most, if not all, of our idols are of our own making. We melt down the values that are in us, like Israel melted their gold, and we fashion something greater than ourselves, that in actuality is nothing more than exactly equal to ourselves.

Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pit, Tom Cruise, whomever…. They are idols of OUR making. WE pay to see them, WE buy the tabloids, WE have made them idols. They certainly don’t stand for anything that we believe in, they just are greater (in our eyes) than ourselves.

Perhaps some of this is due to our low estimation of our own worth, or a poor view of how much God loves us. But that is another topic. As believers, we are not immune to this. In fact, we have our own Christian celebrities. We just think is ok because they are Christian Idols. And I’m not just talking about musicians and actors, we have our “famous pastors” our “famous writers” our ‘famous worship leaders.” We go to conferences, festivals, show up for the “guest speaker”, get the autograph, all to worship our ChristianIdol.

We are simply in love with celebrity. And if that is a Christian celebrity, we feel its ok, but in actuality, they are still idols. Of our own making.

So back to American Idol. Here we have 24 people competing to be the American Idol. BUT, since WE vote on them, WE chose them. WE take our 2-3 hours a week (gold in my book), we take our energy at the water cooler (again modern day gold), we take our SMS and cell minutes (of that’s not modern gold I don’t know what is), and WE fashion an Idol of OUR choosing.

But what we need is not an Idol, but a Savior. We need to lift up Jesus greater than Clarkson and Hicks. We need to break the calf and look to the cross.