A Day On a Cali Campus: Edgar and His Family Idol

Today I spent all day at UCSD sharing my faith with some top notch students from around the country.

UCSD is an interesting animal of a campus. They are incredibly smart. Their library is designed to be the “tree of knowledge”. There is even a long sidewalk shaped like a snake that stretches hundreds of feet next to the library. We heard today that this liberal University is allowing students to put student-made pornographic videos on the campus TV network for the whole campus to see.

The students are chasing after noble things. One of the students I met with today, Edgar, is a non-practicing Catholic who said that is greatest goal in life is to have a great family.

Having a wonderful family is a great thing, but if it is the end goal, life will be much less than what God intended it to be.

If you are like Edgar, you need to know that if family is your ultimate object of worship, comfort, and security then you are in danger. What if a member of your family dies? What if your spouse leaves you? What if your child doesn't become an “A” student or a star athlete?

If any of these things happen, it will result in depression or bitterness. Why? Because the thing (in this case family) that we make an idol or god, if fractured or destroyed, will leave us with nothing to fall back on. Hope, comfort, and security will be stripped away from us.

The good news is that Jesus confronts family idolatry and offers a better solution. He died on the cross so that we could have the opportunity to have Him be the supreme object of worship in our lives rather than family. And if we trust in Him, our families actually become better!

How?

If someone in your family passes away (and Jesus is supreme in your life), He offers to be your comfort and offers to give you hope that you will get to see your family member again. If your spouse leaves you (and Jesus is supreme in your life), He will remind you that He will never leave or forsake you. If your child doesn't meet your academic or athletic standards (and Jesus is the supreme in your life), you will be able to love your child unconditionally since Jesus loved you without any conditions even though You didn't meet his expectations.

Family is a good thing, but when made ultimate, becomes a very bad thing. Jesus is Edgar's only hope to have the family he desires.

The Curse of Technology

Is technology a blessing for the world? Yes and no.

Yes, because technology allows us to fulfill the cultural mandate in Genesis which tells us to subdue and bring order the created world. We are to beautify and cultivate creation using our creative juices. Technology helps us to advance good in the world.

But is technology always good? No, because technology can bring a wedge between us and God. One of the first instances of this that we see in the bible is The Tower of Babel story (Genesis 11). The technology of bricks had been invented and so the people were eager to do something with this technology. The bible says that they “wanted to make a name for themselves” and so they started building the biggest, baddest, tallest building they could. They didn't use their technology to worship God, but they used it to try and become like God (which is how the serpent enticed Adam and Eve).

Technology increases our pride and decreases our dependence on God. It increases our ability to control ourselves and the world we live in.

Today, we really don't have a huge dependence on God. We can walk into our cool garage, get into an air conditioned car, drive to our air conditioned work and repeat the same steps on the way home. Because of technology we can be comfortable all day long without recognizing the scorching heat outside. Meanwhile, the farmers a few miles away are pleading with God to send rain! But even now days, we don't even have to depend on God to grow things. We can just engineer what we want. We are like God!

Technology can allow a sermon about Jesus to be spread to a million people but it can also allow a porn film to be spread to ten million people. The internet porn industry makes more money than professional basketball, football, and baseball combined.

I was reading a puritan prayer this morning and I am amazed at the amount of dependence this writer has toward God. He writes, “May the gales of they mercy blow me safely into harbor. Secure me by thy grace as I sail across this storm sea.” He sees himself as a ship with no engine (this was easier to picture for him because they had no engines at the time). He realized that all he could do was set his sail and depend on the wind of God's Spirit to guide him, protect him, and carry him along to the harbor of heaven.

I love technology more than most people. But I need to repent often of the way it insulates me from thinking about and depending on God.