A priest I know once likened people to shopping carts…the ones with the broken wheel that always pulls to one direction and crashes into things. It’s in the carts’ broken nature and our fallen nature that we dent car doors in the parking lot and say and do things that cause scandal.

It’s natural to be disappointed in those we look up to when they fail, but in reality, we’re not that different. We all fall down. We all make the wrong choices. We say the wrong thing. We cause scandal. The difference is that we have a smaller audience and no one is exalting us.

Do people in the public eye have a greater responsibility to do better? Certainly. But that’s for another article. This one is about you and me.

When the golden calf emerged in the Old Testament as Moses headed down the mountain, we can be pretty certain that the calf, being a pile of metal, had no desire for the adulation of the swooning crowds…but the crowds worshipped it anyway…the calf’s fault?

In our soul is the undeniable truth that we were made by God, for God, and our desire to be united with Him cannot be suppressed…but being broken as we are, like the shopping cart, we veer off course and often choose to unite ourselves with something or someone less. We are made to worship…it’s in the who we worship that the train sometimes runs off the tracks. Idols are born by misdirected “worship.”

It’s perfectly fine to marvel in people’s accomplishments, music, acting, but we need to acknowledge that there’s only one Savior, and ain’t nobody like Him.

So, we can continue to find affirmation from the people we admire, but we must not forget that they are as broken as we are. Let us pray to keep our worship where it belongs, and pray for those in the limelight who garner our affections, that they might live up to their true purpose. Because at the end of the day the trouble with idols isn’t them. Just ask the calf. The trouble with idols is us.