Is Your Illness Your Idol?
“Since you became alive again, so to speak, when Christ arose from the dead, now set your sights on the rich treasures and joys of heaven where he sits beside God in the place of honor and power. Let heaven fill your thoughts; don’t spend your time worrying about things down here.”
Merriam Webster defines an idol as “an object of extreme devotion” or “a representation or symbol of an object of worship.” In Biblical terms, the second definition is more relevant. There are many stories in the Bible about wayward people and their worship of false gods, relics, and objects of nature. God’s hate of idolatry is noted multiple times. However, the New Testament expands the definition to include greed and focusing on fulfilling fleshly desires.
I’m going to take it a step further and suggest that an idol is anything we put above God, anything that shifts our focus from God, and anything that prevents us from going to God. We may not bow to these things, say prayers to it, or even admit that it absorbs a huge portion of our attention, but these are the things that tend to that affect our relationship with and acknowledgment of God the most.
Our illnesses can become our idols if we’re not careful. Illnesses often affect our activities, where we go, what we eat, and how we live day to day. They can shift our way of thinking and cause our emotions to overflow. They change the ins and outs of our entire lives; so, of course, our focus is turned toward our illnesses. Where does the fine line fall between being in tune with our body and being out of tune with God?
It’s super easy to tell where our attention lies (or maybe even where our faith lies) - it’s in what we do or say when we feel the worst. It’s amazing how much pain occupies our minds; when we are in a lot of pain it’s almost as if our minds literally forget everything else and scrambles up our thinking process. It’s difficult to not pay attention to pain, and especially so if it has been present for a long amount of time. But the question at hand is this: is our focus on our physical condition or on God? Are we able to put the pain or suffering in the background while we pray or worship or cry out to Him? Do we even speak to Him when we are in that desperate place?
Sometimes, it may not even be our actual illness that takes our attention - it’s the fear or worry that stems from it. Worry is such a slippery slope. It’s human nature to worry about the details of our illnesses and how it will impact our lives and the lives of those who are close to us. Worry transitions seamlessly into fear. And when fear grows and becomes our motive, our baseline, or what we operate out of, life is miserable (trust me). And quite honestly, if our lives are miserable, well, we have taken God off the throne and replaced Him with an idol; the idol being illness, fear, worry, or whatever it may be that you have put above God’s sovereignty and power over your life.
All of this is why it’s so important to have a relationship with God and read the Word regularly - especially during the “good” or “up” times. We should always be stockpiling His promises and comfort so that when our illnesses roar, we are able to squash it back down with what is stored in our hearts. “Faith checks” are important - monitoring what’s in our heart and whether we have reconciled faith with our illnesses are both essential to our spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being. But it always starts and comes back to where God is sitting in our own lives. If we are dedicated to keeping Him on the throne, nothing - no illness, person, or feeling - will take Him down.