Totally Authentic - Week One
April 01, 2025
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The longing that never goes away
It is human nature to seek guidance and direction — it’s an essential survival trait from birth and as we grow older there are no shortage of people and things we can turn to. (For some that is all that ‘God’ is, an abstract concept that we can point all that longing towards. A symptom of human development, a quirk of psychology, nothing more.) We can fill this longing with all sorts of things, but it never goes away. This makes us vulnerable to those who would manipulate us, and yet often the things that we elevate above all else are good things — great things even! Family, artistry, altruism, activism, scientific endeavour. These are all wonderful things — that God celebrates in us — but whenever we worship some such thing to the exclusion of all else, the cracks will start to show. Both good and bad motivations can easily become idols — giving us standards of perfection we can’t hope to live up to. But in the person of Christ is a selfless love that is big enough to take our longing and go on loving us back.
SEEDS TO SOW: What does the word ‘idol’ make you think of? What do you associate with it?
Read Psalm 97: 1-7
What images do we serve?
There are many images that are worshiped in our society. There’s the images of success and achievement. People worship the picture of the perfect family, or rural domestic bliss, or the self-made business guru. Then there’s the images of technological innovation, the noble cause, the political ideal — images we worship and try to emulate.
Let’s discuss how our feelings towards good things (like family, a worthy cause, the respect of our peers) can become distorted and warped when we start to worship an idealised image of them above all else.
Read Exodus 20: 3-6 and Psalm 115: 4-8
Carving Images 2.0
The psalmist slams idols with their silent, frozen expressions. But nowadays the technology we idolise has an uncanny ability to see and hear us, speak to us even…
While we still have chisels and hammers we have expanded the toolbox for carving idols. We use contemporary tools like AI, social media, digital voice assistants, virtual reality, next day delivery, drones, facial recognition, the list goes on — to carve objects of worship and adoration that supplant God in our worship as they promise to meet all our needs. Discuss how we can utilise the potential of technology while being cautious of the peril of falling into the familiar trap of creating our own gods.
Read 1 Corinthians 10: 23-33
Yes/No, Both/And, Partake/Abstain
Paul makes a nuanced point here about how our behaviour affects others. This new community of believers is not going to have the same strict dietary rules but Paul’s point is that doesn’t mean they can merrily scoff whatever they want. If they eat food that someone says they’ve sacrificed to an idol that could be seen as an endorsement. More freedom is being given but also more responsibility.
Discuss how this transition must have felt for the early disciples.
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