Becoming What We Worship

“The idols of the nations are silver and gold… Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them.” – Psalm 135:15, 18

Buried in this Psalm is this startlingly incisive reminder that we become what we worship. When we worship something, we turn ourselves towards it. We invest our money, time, thought, and energy upon it. We fix ourselves within its presence. And the Psalmist is saying, it is impossible to do all of that and not be yourself changed in the process. And the direction of change will always be that you become more and more like what you worship.

What might have been behind the impulse to make a silver or gold idol? Perhaps a desire to adore something bigger than oneself. A desire to gaze upon something beautiful. A desire to possess something tangible and valuable. Something accessible on one’s own terms and easy to control. Something public and obvious to others. The root of some of these desires are God-given—the need to have something to admire that is outside of ourselves, the longing for something of real value—but when we decide to create it ourselves, we step into the place of God. When God created, he breathed into his creation life. But our creations are dead. “They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; they have ears, but do not hear; nor is there any breath in their mouths” (verses 16-17). Why does the Psalmist go to such lengths to state the obvious? Because we need to see that these idols we create have no life, and thus they cannot give us life. As we worship them, we become more and more void of life ourselves.

It is surprisingly hard to be intentional about what we worship. We are often asked to participate in acts of worship before it’s clear what we even are worshipping: we are invited to invest our resources in jobs, schools, diets, entertainment, relationships, before we’ve necessarily thought about what those things are worshipping and how that will change us. I decided which residency to attend based on what programs offered in terms of prestige and career options: I didn’t ask myself, “what does the culture of this program say about what they worship? Is that the kind of person I want to be like in ten years?” As David Brooks wrote, when you choose to work at a certain place, you are turning yourself into the sort of person who works in that place. Be careful of the idols you make, and the idols others you dwell with are making, this Psalmist says. Whether you mean to or not, that is what you will become.