Ninja Idols

I was obsessed with the Beatles for about 5 years.

From 6th grade through my freshman year of high school, this was the music that I immersed myself in. If I heard 5 seconds of any Beatles song, I would tell you the title, the record it appeared on, it’s order in the record, what year it came out, and probably a weird fact about the producing process. Nearly all of my instrument purchases revolved around the question “did John, Paul, or George have something like this?” (sorry Ringo). When I tried out for the music team in my high school youth group, my leader’s first question was, “Why are you trying to sound like the Beatles?” This was a high compliment at the time, even though I honestly wasn’t consciously trying to sound like them.

It’s normal for us to model ourselves after those around us. It’s normal human tendency to see something that looks like life lived right and say “I want that or want to be that”. Scot McKnight says that “education is about emulation and formation, not information.” Emulation is how we learn to do and think. It’s what taught me how to play guitar and sing. It taught you and I how to speak, play, express ourselves, and more. Emulation is the action of ascribing worth.

This is how worship and formation are intertwined. Worship involves giving attention to something, an object or recipient. “Attention is the beginning of devotion” as Mary Oliver would say. And the attention that we give leads to emulation. Imitation is indeed the highest form of flattery, but more importantly, it is a form of affirmation. Humans are emulating creatures, which makes them worshipping creatures. We can’t emulate what we don’t revere.

Human beings have an innate desire to worship. Worship is a default switch in us that we do not shut off. Our attention and affections are always directed at something, some aim, some end. James K.A. Smith has some amazing literature on this kind of thing, especially in a book of his called “You Are What You Love”. Here is a gross oversimplification of the premise of that book:

Human beings are lovers first, not thinkers. We are desirous creatures that do and interact because we love. Yes, we do because we love, but we also love because we do. There are forces that exist to capture and direct our love to other things.

Worship is bound to happen because humans have desire. We are always on the lookout, consciously or unconsciously, for things to give our leisure, loyalty, and love. Or perhaps to use some language from earlier, we are looking for something to imitate. But we do not always worship what we think we do.

As archaic as it sounds, I use the language of idolatry. Which I understand is a loaded word, a suitcase filled with a lot of negative connotation and judgement. And yet, it’s a helpful term when speaking about this because there is no shortage of things that humanity yields its life and love to. Biblically, the words for “idol”, both in the Old and New Testaments, refer to “image”. Idols in the ancient world were always seen as stand-ins and representatives for the god itself. I think it’s also worth pondering the idea of “image” and imitation. In a sense, idols weren’t just gravened or ironclad replicas, but true visions of the divine “good” to those who revered it. These were often seen to be bridges between the heavens and the earth, being the connection point for humans and the divine. I think the ancients had a more wholistic grasp on this idea of giving ourselves to an idol and what that could form in their communities. 

An idol is anything that competes for your leisure, loyalty, and love. Tim Keller says an idol is “anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.” In worship, the object of our worship, whether we like it or not, is competing for these things in us. And the more consumed you are with the object of your worship, the more it will shape who you are. The saying “You steer where you stare” really rings true. We also see a new meaning to the phrase “You are what you eat.”

Worship can be very sneaky because our affection and attention can be slave to something else without us even noticing. Dallas Willard says that we are always being spiritually formed by something, but when we’re untethered to anything, we certainly will be formed by everything. Christian worship is this unique thing to me because it is a focused effort to give our attention and affection to one “image”, the one that Paul would call “the image of the invisible God”. Christian worship is distinct because of its focus on staring at Jesus.

Ninjas, in our popular understanding, are best known for stealth. They work in the shadows, controlling a situation without getting noticed. This can describe the work of modern idolatry. There are things that we give our life and love to that we would have a hard time pointing out. I notice this in my own life and it is a reality check for sure. There are forces that are competing for our attention and affection on a constant basis, wanting to sell us a vision for the good life or what it means to be a good person. The question isn’t always about saying what we believe, but noticing what we’re imitating. Or better yet, who or what are we following.