golden calves & sacred cows

waging war with the idols in our hearts & homes, part 1

Last night my husband asked a friend of ours a question as we were relaxing around the electric faux fireplace in our living room - one I hope will turn into a woodstove in a charming old Victorian farmhouse one day, but I digress. He asked, “Do you think we are wrong as Christ followers to always be emphasizing the “next right step” instead of being as obedient as possible?”

I can hear the legalist/pharisee accusers grumbling already, but this isn’t a matter of what saves you. Christ, grace, and faith alone justify the unbeliever. That is a very important - nay, crucial - distinction, but not the one in question here. He was simply wondering if we curtail the extent to which we can honor Christ & glorify God in our lives by having such a narrow view of obedience.

This discussion came tumbling back into my stream of thoughts this afternoon as I once again sat next to our little fireplace without fire, trying to solve the topsy turvy feeling our life has held for some while now as dishes pile up in the sink and our son is taking a rare nap without me. The push and pull of what I prioritize has clanged louder and louder in my head since giving birth. Not that it’s any different, but it is certainly more obvious both what my priorities truly are, and how fleeting time is. Childbearing and childrearing present an unique flavor of sanctification not for the faint of heart. And this is coming from a mother of one - mothers of many have my deepest respect and upmost adoration - not because they are doing something unique, but because they are doing no less than exactly what God has called them to do since the Garden, at great cost, I’m sure. Much to be said on what the modern church misses by not abiding by the dominion mandate’s command to be fruitful and multiply, but that’s a topic for another day.

Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes.

James 4:14

Anyway, that was all an incredibly roundabout way of getting to my point (in keeping with the topsy turvy theme). I have been feeling a creeping sense of conviction lately, the type of conviction that doesn’t come on strong and fast, but more like the rumbling of a train in the distance - you hear something, but its appearance in your ears is so gradual that you don’t realize you were hearing something at all until it’s passing you; then you wonder how you could have missed it in the first place.

In a culture that hates God and is constantly screaming lies at women, it’s easy to do combat with the brash narratives that are so obviously the antithesis of truth. It’s simple to say you aren’t a feminist and leave the nonsense at the proverbial door. But I’m beginning to see the more insidious consequences of feminism, the ones that whisper of the Fall and slip inside your back door while you’re fighting to bring back the patriarchy at the front. Lies resembling an apple from a tree like “you can have it all” and “don’t you deserve better?” and “you just need the right system & then you’ll have it together.”

A small but important caveat - this space is not one that entertains the status quo archetype of the hot mess mom. As Christ followers, we are not to be enemies of the good, the true, and the beautiful, because we know Jesus, the creator of these things. We serve a God that is one of order, peace, & holiness. Our hearts and our homes should increasingly reflect these qualities on any given day, and we should exert great effort to make it so.

The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.

Proverbs 13:4

But the ditch on the opposite side of this road, fueled by social media feeds and a lack of Titus 2 mentorship in the church alike, is the lie that we can and should have it all right now. That we deserve the picturesque house, the perfectly maintained organizational system that keeps our home sparkling, happy children who flourish under the care of a family living out God’s design, the homestead on 10 acres that somehow captures both that middle of nowhere feeling and the strong community of a growing church body, the passion project that magically turns itself into a successful passive income stream, the from scratch food that nourishes your families health, need I go on? Ultimately, that we are entitled to some sense of completeness and fulfillment of desire apart from Christ & his atoning work on the cross. That if things don’t feel good now, that must be a problem, and there must be a solution to that problem. What if the solution is repentance?