I’m sure most of us have read enough about this whole Penn State scandal to make us heartbroken 1000 times over and desperately want to hide any children we might know as far away from everyone as possible. How? How could this have happened? How could so many people have let it happen? How could they have just turned away? How could an almost universally respected coach have turned a blind eye to an atrocious act by someone he knew?
More and more in the last few months, I’ve been thinking about the concept of idolatry…about how we invert our allegiance. As a Christian, I take on faith that the center of my being, my prime good, my only real allegiance, is to be God. God is to be the lens through which I am to view the world. It is God that is the ground of my, and everything else’s, being. Idolatry is taking something else, something created, even something good (most of the time, especially something good), and making that the center of your life. It can be an institution, an ideology, a belief, a person, a relationship, an activity, a nation, a political party, or whatever. Christians are by no means immune to a temptation to worship idols. Our idols go by the names of Church, Bible, Denomination, congregation, tradition, family. These, in and of themselves, are good things. They are God-given things that can witness to the love God has for us. But when we put a lesser good in place of the highest good, we have perverted that for which they were created, and our world becomes out of whack.
And the thing I’ve realized is that idols always demand the sacrifice of an innocent. Nothing good, nothing pure, nothing right is allowed to exist. How could it? An idol can only continue to exist if we put to death everything else that could pull us away from it. Idols demand that nothing else can matter to us but the idol itself.
In our modern world, we sit comfortably on our high horse as we look at the past and decry those cultures that engaged in human sacrifice, especially of children, secure in our righteousness that we would never do such a thing. But, watch the news. Look around you. We sacrifice children to our idols every day. Penn State is just the most recent example. A group of powerful people were so committed to the institution of Penn State and its football program that they allowed young children to be sexually abused rather than tarnish its reputation. They looked the other way because Penn State, or their jobs, or their lifestyle, mattered to them more than the lives of these children. Their idols demanded a sacrifice, and however reluctantly, they laid them at the altar.
How many times in recent years have we seen this play out? Churches, more devoted to maintenance of the institution than the God they should be serving, look the other way as the most innocent among them are destroyed rather than risk respectability. Families remain silent as an abusive parent or spouse or uncle destroys another generation while clinging to an image of familial perfection. We allow thousands of poor children die every day rather than part with a penny. We send teenagers off to war, watching them come home in body bags or with psychological scars that will haunt them their whole lives for “national honor.”
Idolatry leads only to destruction. How could these officials at Penn State let this happen for so long? Because their highest good was not THE highest good.
Again, as a Christian, I believe our real highest good, the real God, does not demand the sacrifice of the innocent. God categorically rejects the sacrifice of children in Genesis. God asks only that we sacrifice our idols. God asks that we give to God our desires, our relationships, our loves. And God will return them to us, but this time turned right side up. We get to continue to love our nation, our churches, our families, and even our sports. But we will recognize them for what they are; gifts, not gods. And this God will never EVER ask us to look the other way when an innocent is being abused. For this God would and did suffer abuse rather than allow anyone to hurt.
