Help from Andre Agassi in dethroning our idols

Tim Keller says an idol in your life is the thing(s) you can’t live without. When that thing (job, relationship, reputation, car, house, whatever) is taken away, you say, ‘I don’t want to live anymore.’ An idol is anything (including a good thing) that you have made into an ultimate thing.

One good way of taking idols off the thrones of our lives is reminding ourselves that they can’t and won’t satisfy us. Isaiah says of the idols of Babylon: ‘If one cries to it, it does not answer or save him from his trouble’ (Isaiah 46.7).

That thing (other than Jesus) you’re pursuing with all your heart and soul will not satisfy you once you get it. It won’t satisfy. When you cry to it, it will not answer or save you from your trouble.

I have been absorbed by Andre Agassi’s autobiography Open over the last couple days. He helps us see this truth.

When Andre Agassi finally won a Grand Slam (at Wimbledon), after years and years of incredible effort, everyone said he had finally broken through and was a different person with this victory under his belt. But here’s how Agassi sees it. ‘I don’t feel that Wimbledon has changed me. I feel, in fact, as if I’ve been let in on a dirty little secret: winning changes nothing. Now that I’ve won a slam, I know something that very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn’t feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn’t last as long as the bad. Not even close.’

When Agassi finally attained the number one tennis ranking in the world, this was a major achievement. He was the twelfth tennis player to be number one in the two decades since they had begun computer rankings. He told a reporter on the phone that he was happy about his number one ranking and that it felt good to be the best he could be. But then he tells his readers: ‘It’s a lie. This isn’t at all what I feel. It’s what I want to feel. It’s what I expected to feel, what I tell myself to feel. But in fact I feel nothing…I did it – I’m the number one tennis player on earth, and yet I feel empty. If being number one feels empty, unsatisfying, what’s the point?’

If our idols can’t answer or save us, who can? Back to Isaiah — to some of my favorite verses in the whole book. ‘Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save’ (Isaiah 46.3-4).

Put down your idols and be carried by God.

Posted by Stephen Witmer on Dec 27, 09:06 AM