As we grow up, we gravitate towards people who we look up to, those having achieved something we find admirable, maybe notably athletic, smart, charismatic, or beautiful.
As we roll into careers we notice people who appear to excel at their jobs or their duties.
We recognize the performance of skilled athletes, musicians, dancers, dramatists and entertainers. When we understand business, we can learn to better appreciate good sales and marketing people, and people who found companies who embody many of these talents including being able to come up with successful ideas.
A good novel or an account of history causes us to see into the mind of a researcher and we can begin to admire those who lived in the past if not the writer him or herself.
We often hold up with awe the men and women who have shone uncommon virtue in the face of the most terrifying conditions and we laud those who make the extra super human effort to rescue others in death defying circumstances.
Photo by Catherine Kozdoba on Pexels.com
There are times we can begin to idolize these people or individuals and place them on a pedestal. We become fans, groupies, part of a following, losing our identity in another, even a significant other. We can begin to fill in everything we do not know about them with our imagined constructs of who they should be. We might use another to fulfill our need. We may even become desperate to know more fully those who we seek to become an idol.
Underlying these desires to be fulfilled by another, someone to trust, or even something, is driven by a deep need within ourselves and it can achieve an addictive quality.
When we place people on a pedestal and then they do wrong, it’s often not so much their fault that our image of them gets shaken, it’s our unrealistic expectations that are not being fulfilled. We make normal people, people who are average in many ways (like virtually all of us) into a person they are not.
Like many addictions, one the spell is broken, there is a major withdrawal.
As we get older more mature, we begin to differentiate between the aspects of people that have garnered our respect and the other aspects that are just as common as ourselves and even some of their weaknesses. We gravitate towards self-awareness and acceptance.
Coming to terms with limitations and natural human imperfection just allows others in our minds to be more human and less of a super hero, the answer to all your needs.. And if we are mature we can accept the other person as they are without the disappointments that arrive with so many unrealistic expectations.
When we are young, we tend to place an inordinate amount of trust in those we need to. Certainly as a baby, we need to. As we grow we still build those attachment, presumably because we have a need to grow in the direction where we discover those more capable, or it could be we want someone to something to be able to carry us into the known and the unknown, until they can no longer.
The military and athletics are good examples. With an effective leader, that trust is warranted and even required, and as a result, the non-effective leader draws the ire of many. Winning or surviving, and bringing out that right esprit-de-corp is part of that evidence of sound leadership.
It helps to understand that great leaders also have great people in the positions beneath their position. The followers of any viable organization requires capable people at every position. The best organizations are usually thrones that empower good people and weed out the bad apples, unless they have a system to empowering unqualified with the skills necessary to succeed.
Leaders are not the only ones we admire, we can genuinely admire and be grateful for those who provided for us when no others would or could lend us a hand. Whether the difficult condition was not of our doing, or especially if it was. We hold dear, the friends who come willingly and to give us aid may contain our greatest admiration.
Jesus Christ is the ultimate one whom can handle all the energy that goes into our worldly idols. Christ will never disappoint. Christ is worthy of all worship and can meet our deepest needs, even into eternity.
Christ has only one criteria for you, in all of your imperfection and weakness, and that is that you have faith in Him and trust Him as your Lord and Savior. With that one blessing of faith, He promises He will never leave of forsake you and that you will have a place in heaven in God’s Kingdom.
The relationship between a believer and Christ is often compared to a right Marriage, hence, Marriage is commonly referred to in illustration of the trustworthiness and loyalty of Christ and the attitude of a believer towards his or her relationship with Christ which should also be reflected in the covenant relationship between a husband and wife.
Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled, for the sexually immoral and adulterers God will judge. 5 Make sure that your way of life is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,” 6 so that we confidently say,
“The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid.
What will man do to me?” – Hebrews 13:4-6
Last but not least is the admiration and gratitude for the one who gave everything he had to save you from certain destruction. I say admiration and gratitude, not worship. But it is the One, the Lord of lords, the King of kings, who laid his Holy Crown aside and necessarily gave Himself up to suffer for those who deserve eternal wrath.
For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of parched ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should desire Him.
3 He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our peace fell upon Him,
And by His wounds we are healed. – Isaiah 53:2-5
He who is worthy of our worship, is also wholly deserving of our gratitude and admiration for His heroic sacrifice, in our place, paying the penalty that we deserve, to save us from eternal hell for our sins so that we may liberated from death and enjoy eternal life with Him.
All He asks in return is that you trust Him. Turn from sin. Seek His divine Grace.
The kingdom for believers is open here and now. Do not wait.
For a one minute explanation of the Gospel from the late Pastor John MacArthur, watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCP9UcC7BzE
For a review of the Ten Commandments: https://www.challenyee.com/the-ten-commandments/
ACT LIKE MEN a short talk given by John MacArthur (click on the link)
All quoted excerpts have footnotes removed, usually from Legacy Standard Bible (LSB), sometimes from New International Version (NIV), on rare occasion the Amplified Bible (AMP).
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8-3-24