Idolizing Someone Quotes

But remember, there are two ways to dehumanize someone: by dismissing them, and by idolizing them.

Nico studied his face – his sea-green eyes, his grin, his ruffled black hair. Somehow Percy Jackson seemed like a regular guy now, not a mythical figure. Not someone to idolize or crush on.

The energy you’ll expend focusing on someone else’s life is better spent working on your own. Just be your own idol.

Be careful who you choose as your hero or who you choose to deify, be it Clay Aiken or Barack Obama. You put all you're hope and all your dreams and all your ideas about stuff into one human being. They're a human being they're going to let you down. You can't make someone your hero because of something you read on the internet. The internet is not a source of information it is a source of disinformation.

A person can get…stuck, for lack a better word, in a life. It’s surprisingly easy, really. Hours bleed into days; days fade into months. Before you know it, years have passed, and you’re just this person, someone your younger self wouldn’t even recognize.

If you choose to be fearless, then be fearlessly authentic not an imitation of someone you envy.

I don’t care if she deserves someone just as sweet as she is. I want her chained to me, and I’ll rip out the throat of anyone who thinks they can take her away.

Music can be your friend when you have none, your lover when you’re needy. Your rage, your sorrow, your joy, your pain. Your voice when you’ve lost your own. To be a part of that, to be the soundtrack of someone’s life, is a beautiful thing. —Killian James, lead singer and guitarist, Kill John

When you love someone, you end up caring about each and every person they love. When you hate someone, you end up caring about every single person who hates them.

I love it when someone insults me. That means that I don't have to be nice anymore.

Someone is digging your grave right now. Someone is drawing a bath to wash you clean, he said, so think of the wind, so happy, so warm. It’s a fairy tale, the story underneath the story, sliding down the polished halls, lightning here and gone. We make these ridiculous idols so we can to what’s behind them, but what happens after we get up the ladder? Do we simply stare at what’s horrible and forgive it?

It takes someone special to live among monsters and not become one.

I am told by people all the time that they simply do not have time to read and listen to all the material they have purchased or subscribed to. But time is democratic and just. Everyone has the same amount. When I choose to read with my mid morning coffee break and you choose to blather about trivia with friends, when I choose to study for an hour sitting on my backyard deck at day's end but you choose to watch a TIVO'd American Idol episode, we reveal much. When someone says he does not have the time to apply himself to acquiring the know-how required to create sufficient value for his stated desires, he is a farmer surrounded by ripe fruit and vegetables, whole grains, and a herd of cattle on his own property who dies of starvation, unable to organize his time and discipline himself to eat.

Phones and TV screens have kind of a grace built into their separation, like the distance between the stage and the audience. It was reassuring to sense someone's presence at a certain remove so that the space couldn't be destroyed by interacting directly, or the relationship ruined by anything I did.

I don't want you to look up, #Girlboss, because all that looking up can keep you down. The energy you'll expend focusing on someone else's life is better spent working on your own. Just be your own idol.

If your relationship is draining your energy, making you lose yourself and taking your attention away from God, then you are not in a relationship but a cult. You are busy creating an idol (mini-God) for yourself.

Stop talking about yourself like that. I wouldn't let someone else talk about you so cruelly, and I'll be damned before I let you do it, either.

If the light we have is continually engulfed by the darkness in a way that makes the darkness even darker, maybe we should think about getting our light from Someone else before it gets a whole lot darker.

My friends, don't idolize hardship. What you idolize is what your heart will look for and what your heart looks for is what you will have. And don't capitalize on misfortune, because you will always seek out to have capital! Throw away that pride! Don't put sorrow on a pedestal! If you ask me if I would rather have had my sorrows or not, I will tell you that no, I would rather have not had any of them! In the blink of an eye, I would rid myself of them! I have no pride. I don't rely on hardships and sorrows to mold me into someone. I don't allow myself to be dictated. When hardship and sorrow come knocking, saying "We are responsible for who you are today, let us in!" I'm going to say, in a split second, "No you're not! Go away, I don't owe you anything!

When the anarchist, as the mouthpiece of the declining levels of society, insists on 'right,' 'justice,' 'equal rights' with such beautiful indignation, he is just acting under the pressure of his lack of culture, which cannot grasp why he really suffers, what he is poor in– in life. A drive to find causes is powerful in him: it must be somebody's fault that he's feeling bad . . . Even his 'beautiful indignation' does him good; all poor devils like to whine--it gives them a little thrill of power. Even complaints, the act of complaining, can give life the charm on account of which one can stand to live it: there is a subtle dose of revenge in every complaint; one blames those who are different for one's own feeling bad, and in certain circumstances even being bad, as if they were guilty of an injustice, a prohibited privilege. 'If I'm a lowlife, you should be one too': on this logic, revolutions are built.– Complaining is never good for anything; it comes from weakness. Whether one ascribes one's feeling bad to others or to oneself–the socialist does the former, the Christian, for example, the latter–makes no real difference. What is common to both and, let us add, what is unworthy, is that it should be someone's fault that one is suffering–in short, that the sufferer prescribes the honey of revenge as a cure for his own suffering.

don’t care if she deserves someone just as sweet as she is. I want her chained to me, and I’ll rip out the throat of anyone who thinks they can take her away.

If idolatry means giving something or someone more prominence than they deserve, then Gogs are idolators. Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, pg 6

There’s nothing the public loves more than to tear down someone who was once their idol.

It's pathetic that I'm so starved for any kind of softer emotion that the second someone comes to me with gentle hands instead of sharp words, I'm willing to walk to the Underworld and back to keep them in my life.

So let’s talk a little about April May’s theory of tiered fame. Tier 1: Popularity You are a big deal in your high school or neighborhood. You have a peculiar vehicle that people around town recognize, you are a pastor at a medium-to-large church, you were once the star of the high school football team. Tier 2: Notoriety You are recognized and/or well-known within certain circles. Maybe you’re a preeminent lepidopterist whom all the other lepidopterists idolize. Or you could be the mayor or meteorologist in a medium-sized city. You might be one of the 1.1 million living people who has a Wikipedia page. Tier 3: Working-Class Fame A lot of people know who you are and they are distributed around the world. There’s a good chance that a stranger will approach you to say hi at the grocery store. You are a professional sports player, musician, author, actor, television host, or internet personality. You might still have to hustle to make a living, but your fame is your job. You’ll probably trend on Twitter if you die. Tier 4: True Fame You get recognized by fans enough that it is a legitimate burden. People take pictures of you without your permission, and no one would scoff if you called yourself a celebrity. When you start dating someone, you wouldn’t be surprised to read about it in magazines. You are a performer, politician, host, or actor whom the majority of people in your country would recognize. Your humanity is so degraded that people are legitimately surprised when they find out that you’re “just like them” because, sometimes, you buy food. You never have to worry about money again, but you do need a gate with an intercom on your driveway. Tier 5: Divinity You are known by every person in your world, and you are such a big deal that they no longer consider you a person. Your story is much larger than can be contained within any human lifetime, and your memory will continue long after your earthly form wastes away. You are a founding father of a nation, a creator of a religion, an emperor, or an idea. You are not currently alive.

You're not one, you know." "Not what?" "A monster." I smile a little. "I would know, being a monster myself. You might move among us, but you aren't like us at all." She narrows her eyes. "I can't tell if that's a compliment or an insult." "It's a compliment. It takes someone special to live among monsters and not become one.

Pop stars AREN'T cool. Cheating on your husband or your wife isn't cool. Having no modesty with your body and no self-respect is NOT cool. It doesn't matter how pretty someone's voice is, or if they SAY they are Christian, God calls us to modesty and faithfulness, so we need to be careful to not idolize anyone that goes way off of what God wants.

Music can be your friend when you have none, your lover when you’re needy. Your rage, your sorrow, your joy, your pain. Your voice when you’ve lost your own. To be a part of that, to be the soundtrack of someone’s life, is a beautiful thing.

Safe relationships are centered and grounded in forgiveness. When you have a friend with the ability to forgive you for hurting her or letting her down, something deeply spiritual occurs in the transaction between you two. You actually experience a glimpse of the deepest nature of God himself. People who forgive can—and should—also be people who confront. What is not confessed can’t be forgiven. God himself confronts our sins and shows us how we wound him: “I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from me, and by their eyes, which played the harlot after their idols” (Ezek. 6:9 NASB). When we are made aware of how we hurt a loved one, then we can be reconciled. Therefore, you shouldn’t discount someone who “has something against you,” labeling him as unsafe. He might actually be attempting to come closer in love, in the way that the Bible tells us we are to do.

The reality is, when someone knows the truth, knows the will of God, knows what God has spoken , and yet pushes back and doesn’t obey, it is idolatry . The reason? Their will, agenda, wishes, and desires have been placed above God’s. All of these things come before Him, and an idol.

Yes, yes, it ended in my corrupting them all! How it could come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole. I only know that I was the cause of their sin and downfall. Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this earth, so happy and sinless before my coming. They learnt to lie, grew fond of lying, and discovered the charm of falsehood. Oh, at first perhaps it began innocently, with a jest, coquetry, with amorous play, perhaps indeed with a germ, but that germ of falsity made its way into their hearts and pleased them. Then sensuality was soon begotten, sensuality begot jealousy, jealousy—cruelty . . . Oh, I don't know, I don't remember; but soon, very soon the first blood was shed. They marvelled and were horrified, and began to be split up and divided. They formed into unions, but it was against one another. Reproaches, upbraidings followed. They came to know shame, and shame brought them to virtue. The conception of honour sprang up, and every union began waving its flags. They began torturing animals, and the animals withdrew from them into the forests and became hostile to them. They began to struggle for separation, for isolation, for individuality, for mine and thine. They began to talk in different languages. They became acquainted with sorrow and loved sorrow; they thirsted for suffering, and said that truth could only be attained through suffering. Then science appeared. As they became wicked they began talking of brotherhood and humanitarianism, and understood those ideas. As they became criminal, they invented justice and drew up whole legal codes in order to observe it, and to ensure their being kept, set up a guillotine. They hardly remembered what they had lost, in fact refused to believe that they had ever been happy and innocent. They even laughed at the possibility o this happiness in the past, and called it a dream. They could not even imagine it in definite form and shape, but, strange and wonderful to relate, though they lost all faith in their past happiness and called it a legend, they so longed to be happy and innocent once more that they succumbed to this desire like children, made an idol of it, set up temples and worshipped their own idea, their own desire; though at the same time they fully believed that it was unattainable and could not be realised, yet they bowed down to it and adored it with tears! Nevertheless, if it could have happened that they had returned to the innocent and happy condition which they had lost, and if someone had shown it to them again and had asked them whether they wanted to go back to it, they would certainly have refused. They answered me: "We may be deceitful, wicked and unjust, we know it and weep over it, we grieve over it; we torment and punish ourselves more perhaps than that merciful Judge Who will judge us and whose Name we know not. But we have science, and by the means of it we shall find the truth and we shall arrive at it consciously. Knowledge is higher than feeling, the consciousness of life is higher than life. Science will give us wisdom, wisdom will reveal the laws, and the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness.

The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace?

First, there is the burden of pride. The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace? The heart's fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable. Yet the sons of earth are carrying this burden continually, challenging every word spoken against them, cringing under every criticism, smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them. Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort. He develops toward himself a kindly sense of humor and learns to say, "Oh, so you have been overlooked? They have placed someone else before you? They have whispered that you are pretty small stuff after all? And now you feel hurt because the world is saying about you the very things you have been saying about yourself? Only yesterday you were telling God that you were nothing, a mere worm of the dust. Where is your consistency? Come on, humble yourself, and cease to care what men think.

My definition of an American Idol is someone who is a great talent and who communicates well with the audience

I don’t think an eating disorder is a good excuse for bullying someone, Sam. And if you do, then you haven’t done quite as much “work” on yourself as you might like to believe.

I am not someone who needs to be protected. I am the knife in the dark, the threat ready to be leveled at any enemy that arises. What the fuck do I need a shield for?

...his house was large and strived to be impressive. It had a lot of glass and redwood in its makeup and was obviously designed by someone who idolized Frank Lloyd Wright without quite grasping his basic principles.

And this need for communality of worship is the chief torment of each man individually, and of mankind as a whole, from the beginning of the ages. In the cause of universal worship, they have destroyed each other with the sword. They have made gods and called upon each other: "Abandon your gods and come and worship ours, otherwise death to you and your gods!" And so it will be until the end of the world, even when all gods have disappeared from the earth: they will still fall down before idols. (...) I tell you that man has no more tormenting care than to find someone to whom he can hand over as quick as possible that gift of freedom with which the miserable creature is born.

I still felt the burden of my involuntary role as a mammal dragging me down. In the same way that a night of sleep put wrinkles in a bedsheet, just being alive took a toll. To talk to someone you had to move the flesh on your face. You bathed to get rid of the grime that built up on your skin and clipped your nails because they kept growing. I exhausted myself trying to achieve the bare minimum, but it had never been enough. My will and my body would always disengage before I got there.

Music can be your friend when you have none, your lover when you’re needy. Your rage, your sorrow, your joy, your pain. Your voice when you’ve lost your own. To be a part of that, to be the soundtrack of someone’s life, is a beautiful thing. —Killian James,

Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace?

It is in this sense that Nietzsche is driven, against many explicit resolutions to the contrary, to be a No-sayer. For what the décadents who surround him are doing is to say No where they should be saying Yes, where they should be Dionysian; and what is leading them to this life-denying perversity, mostly of course unconsciously, is that they subscribe to a set of values that puts the central features of *this* world at a discount. Where they find suffering, they immediately look for someone to blame, and end up hating themselves, or generalize that into a hatred of "human nature". They look for "peace of mind", using it as a blanket term and failing to see the diversity of states, some of them desirable and some of them the reverse, which that term covers. They confuse cause and effect, thinking that the connection between virtue and happiness is that the former leads to the latter, whereas in fact the reverse is the case. They have, in Nietzsche's cruelly accurate phrase, "the vulgar ambition to possess generous feelings" ("Expeditions of an Untimely Man, number 6). They confuse breeding fine men with taming them. Throughout the major part of Twilight this devastating list of our vulgarities continues.

It is much better to tell the truth than to compromise truth and have someone believe a lie. It is far better they hear the truth now than that they believe they can keep other idols in their life—and then one day, when it’s too late, shockingly hear the Master say, “Depart; I never knew you, you who were deceived!

Someone once said, “Think about the things you’d most hate to lose (outside of your family), and you’ll identify your idols.” These are not only the things we treasure too much but what we’ve likely lost perspective on. We place this stuff on a pedestal that wasn’t built for it. If we’re not careful, TV can become this.

To Felicity, she saw now. Love was something that only really happened within the pages of a book. For long periods of Elle's life, she'd thought that was true, too. But it wasn't. It was you and him, the two of you, a team to face the world together, and that was what she'd been looking for all those years; not an idol, or someone to lust after, or someone to fix her

SOCIAL/GENERAL ICEBREAKERS 1. What do you think of the movie/restaurant/party? 2. Tell me about the best vacation you’ve ever taken. 3. What’s your favorite thing to do on a rainy day? 4. If you could replay any moment in your life, what would it be? 5. What one thing would you really like to own? Why? 6. Tell me about one of your favorite relatives. 7. What was it like in the town where you grew up? 8. What would you like to come back as in your next life? 9. Tell me about your kids. 10. What do you think is the perfect age? Why? 11. What is a typical day like for you? 12. Of all the places you’ve lived, tell me about the one you like the best. 13. What’s your favorite holiday? What do you enjoy about it? 14. What are some of your family traditions that you particularly enjoy? 15. Tell me about the first car you ever bought. 16. How has the Internet affected your life? 17. Who were your idols as a kid? Have they changed? 18. Describe a memorable teacher you had. 19. Tell me about a movie/book you’ve seen or read more than once. 20. What’s your favorite restaurant? Why? 21. Tell me why you were named ______. What is the origin of your last name? 22. Tell me about a place you’ve visited that you hope never to return to. get over your mom’s good intentions. 23. What’s the best surprise you’ve ever received? 24. What’s the neatest surprise you’ve ever planned and pulled off for someone else? 25. Skiing here is always challenging. What are some of your favorite places to ski? 26. Who would star as you in a movie about your life? Why that person? 27. Who is the most famous person you’ve met? 28. Tell me about some of your New Year’s resolutions. 29. What’s the most antiestablishment thing you’ve ever done? 30. Describe a costume that you wore to a party. 31. Tell me about a political position you’d like to hold. 32. What song reminds you of an incident in your life? 33. What’s the most memorable meal you’ve eaten? 34. What’s the most unforgettable coincidence you’ve experienced or heard about? 35. How are you able to tell if that melon is ripe? 36. What motion picture star would you like to interview? Why? 37. Tell me about your family. 38. What aroma brings forth a special memory? 39. Describe the scariest person you ever met. 40. What’s your favorite thing to do alone? 41. Tell me about a childhood friend who used to get you in trouble. 42. Tell me about a time when you had too much to eat or drink. 43. Describe your first away-from-home living quarters or experience. 44. Tell me about a time that you lost a job. 45. Share a memory of one of your grandparents. 46. Describe an embarrassing moment you’ve had. 47. Tell me something most people would never guess about you. 48. What would you do if you won a million dollars? 49. Describe your ideal weather and why. 50. How did you learn to ski/hang drywall/play piano?

In our desire to have a political tribe to belong to, we create an idol. When we cast aside our intellectual curiosity, refuse to adapt our opinions on policy when presented with new information, and lose our ability to view each candidate and every issue independently, we have cast our lot with a political party. We have sworn allegiance to something or someone who is not God and was never designed to be worshipped.

Why do we live in this cycle of validation, swept up by the empty promises of the Love Idol, only to sink down when someone rejects us? We make frenetic jumps from island to island between tidal waves of insecurity. Beth Moore says culture has “thrown us under the bus. We have a fissure down the spine of our souls.”[22] We want to keep up appearances. We want to avoid criticism. We treat our lives like a stat sheet, trying to keep score the world’s way.

The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace? The heart’s fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable. Yet the sons of earth are carrying this burden continually, challenging every word spoken against them, cringing under every criticism, smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them. Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method (p. 112).

There is still another reason for conservatives to be against what they see as a “negative” history. If conservative politics rests on Strict Father morality, the national family must be seen as a moral family and the rules by which the national family operates must be seen as moral. Otherwise, the legitimacy of all forms of governmental authority is called into question. The very foundation of Strict Father morality is the legitimacy of parental authority. To someone raised with Strict Father morality, a “negative” history might call into question that authority. Strict Father morality cannot tolerate the questioning of legitimate authority by children. Children are supposed to venerate and idolize legitimate authorities, so that they can develop character by following the rules laid down by that authority. “Negative” history, conservatives believe, would lead to questioning authority and would threaten that process. Of

The image of the ideal white man—the bold and confident ones we end up idolizing, giving promotions to, electing to office—that image is often the epitome of mediocrity. And when entrusted with these positions of power, such men often perform as well as someone with mediocre skills would be expected to: we see the results in our floundering businesses and in our deadlocked government. Rather than risk seeming weak by admitting mistakes, white men double down on them.

The ending is brilliant and satisfying. It’s satisfying because we don’t need to wonder whether Jonah repented and saw the light. He must have. How do we know? Well, how else would we know this story, unless Jonah told it to someone? And who would ever tell a story in which he is seen as an evil fool on every page, except a man in whom God’s grace had reached the center of his heart? Why, though, are we not shown Jonah’s response in the book? It is as if God aimed an arrow of loving rebuke at Jonah’s heart, set it a-fly, and suddenly Jonah vanishes, leaving us in its path. The question is coming right at us, because you are Jonah and I am Jonah. We are so enslaved to our idols that we don’t care about people who are Different, who live in the big cities, or who are just in our own families but very hard to love. Are we, like Jonah, willing to change? If we are, then we must look to the Ultimate Jonah, and to his sign, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Everybody eventually surrenders to something or someone. If not to God, you will surrender to the opinions or expectations of others, to money, to resentment, to fear, or to your own pride, lusts, or ego. You were designed to worship God — and if you fail to worship him, you will create other things (idols) to give your life to. You are free to choose what you surrender to, but you are not free from the consequences of that choice. E. Stanley Jones said, “If you don’t surrender to Christ, you surrender to chaos.

Honest question: If I am a good Christian, and have faith and stuff, will God protect my children? Honest answer: He might. Or He might not. Honest follow-up question: So what good is He? I think the answer is that He’s still good. But our safety, and the safety of our kids, isn’t part of the deal. This is incredibly hard to accept on the American evangelical church scene, because we love families, and we love loving families, and we nearly associate godliness itself with cherishing family beyond any other earthly thing. That someone would challenge this bond, the primacy of the family bond, is offensive. And yet . . . Jesus did it. And it was even more offensive, then, in a culture that wasn’t nearly so individualistic as ours. Everything was based on family: your reputation, your status—everything. And yet He challenges the idea that our attachment to family is so important, so noble, that it is synonymous with our love for Him. Which leads to some other spare thoughts, like this: we can make idols out of our families. Again, in a “Focus on the Family” subculture, it’s hard to imagine how this could be. Families are good. But idols aren’t made of bad things. They used to be fashioned out of trees or stone, and those aren’t bad, either. Idols aren’t bad things; they’re good things, made Ultimate. We make things Ultimate when we see the true God as a route to these things, or a guarantor of them. It sounds like heresy, but it’s not: the very safety of our family can become an idol. God wants us to want Him for Him, not merely for what He can provide. Here’s another thought: As wonderful as “mother love” is, we have to make sure it doesn’t become twisted. And it can. It can become a be-all, end-all, and the very focus of a woman’s existence. C. S. Lewis writes that it’s especially dangerous because it seems so very, very righteous. Who can possibly challenge a mother’s love? God can, and does, when it becomes an Ultimate. And it’s more likely to become a disordered Ultimate than many other things, simply because it does seem so very righteous. Lewis says this happens with patriotism too.

Distributions can only be based on measurements, but as in the case of measuring intelligence, the nature of measurement is often complicated and troubled by ambiguities. Consider the problem of noise, or what is known as luck in human affairs. Since the rise of the new digital economy, around the turn of the century, there has been a distinct heightening of obsessions with contests like American Idol, or other rituals in which an anointed individual will suddenly become rich and famous. When it comes to winner-take-all contests, onlookers are inevitably fascinated by the role of luck. Yes, the winner of a singing contest is good enough to be the winner, but even the slightest flickering of fate might have changed circumstances to make someone else the winner. Maybe a different shade of makeup would have turned the tables. And yet the rewards of winning and losing are vastly different. While some critics might have aesthetic or ethical objections to winner-take-all outcomes, a mathematical problem with them is that noise is amplified. Therefore, if a societal system depends too much on winner-take-all contests, then the acuity of that system will suffer. It will become less reality-based.

I’ve heard of movie stars and Pop Idols getting plastic surgery to change their looks drastically, but I’m not sure if I would want to do something like that,” I said. “I prefer to be natural…the way I was born.” Auntabelle nodded in agreement. “I’m all for technological and medical advancement but when it comes to altering yourself so much because you don’t like the way you were born or because you simply don’t like yourself the way you are, that you become a completely different person, then I’m not in support of it. I wouldn’t want to use my technology to alter someone so much they are no longer their own self.

This was his glory and his guilt-- that he let them teach him to feel guilty of his glory, to accept the part of a sacrificial animal and, in punishment for the sin of intelligence, to perish on the altars of the brutes. The tragic joke of human history is that on any of the altars men erected, it was always man whom they immolated and the animal whom they enshrined. It was always the animal's attributes, not man's, that humanity worshipped: the idol of instinct and the idol of force--the mystics and the kings-- the mystics, who longed for an irresponsible consciousness and ruled by means of the claim that their dark emotions were superior to reason, that knowledge cam in blind, causeless fits, blindly to be followed, not doubted-- the kings, who ruled by means of claws and muscles, with conquest as their method and looting as their aim, with a club or a gun as sole sanction of their power. The defenders of man's soul were concerned with his feelings, and the defenders of man's body were concerned with his stomach-- but both were united against his mind. Yet no one, not the lowest of humans, is ever able fully to renounce his brain. No one has ever believed in the irrational; what they do believe in is the unjust. Whenever a man denounces the mind, it is because his goal is of a nature the mind would not permit him to confess. When he preaches contradictions, he does so in the knowledge that someone will accept the burden of the impossible, someone will make it work for him at the price of his own suffering or life; destruction is the price of any contradiction. It is the victims who made injustice possible. It is the men of reason who made it possible for the rule of the brute to work. The despoiling of reason has been the motive of every anti-reason creed on earth. The despoiling ability has been the purpose of every creed that preached self-sacrifice.

Ironically, some anxious evangelicals get even more anxious at the mention of contemplative prayer. Isn't that too Catholic or Eastern Orthodox? Isn't that Buddhist? Isn't that a slippery slope into NEW AGE RELIGION? Evangelicals are terrified of slippery slopes that start out innocent enough. One minute you're doing a downward dog stretch in a yoga studio and then the "eastern religion" slippery slope takes hold. Next thing you know, you're offering a fruit bowl to a pleasant little false idol statue somewhere in Asia. We've all heard that this happened once to a friend of a friend of someone we knew once at a church somewhere.

We also have knowledge of another superstition from that period: be­lief in what was termed the Book-Man. On some shelf in some hexagon, it was argued, there must exist a book that is the cipher and perfect com­pendium of all other books, and some librarian must have examined that book; this librarian is analogous to a god. In the language of this zone there are still vestiges of the sect that worshiped that distant librarian. Many have gone in search of Him. For a hundred years, men beat every possible path­ and every path in vain. How was one to locate the idolized secret hexagon that sheltered Him? Someone proposed searching by regression: To locate book A, first consult book B, which tells where book A can be found; to lo­ cate book B, first consult book C, and so on, to infinity....It is in ventures such as these that I have squandered and spent my years. I cannot think it unlikely that there is such a total book on some shelf in the universe. I pray to the unknown gods that some man-even a single man, tens of centuries ago-has perused and read that book. If the honor and wisdom and joy of such a reading are not to be my own, then let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my own place be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enor­mous Library may find its justification.

As an antidote to pride, man has been endowed with the capacity for prayer, an activity which is not to be confined to prayer in the narrow religious sense of the word. To pray is to pay attention or, shall we say, to ‘listen’ to someone or something other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention—be it on a landscape, or a poem or a geometrical problem or an idol or the True God—he completely forgets his own ego and desires in listening to what the other has to say to him, he is praying. Choice of attention—to attend to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what the choice of action is to the outer. In both cases a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.

Rejoicing in Christ is also crucial because idols are almost always good things. If we have made idols out of work and family, we do not want to stop loving our work and our family. Rather, we want to love Christ so much more that we are not enslaved by our attachments. “Rejoicing” in the Bible is much deeper than simply being happy about something. Paul directed that we should “rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4), but this cannot mean “always feel happy,” since no one can command someone to always have a particular emotion. To rejoice is to treasure a thing, to assess its value to you, to reflect on its beauty and importance until your heart rests in it and tastes the sweetness of it. “Rejoicing” is a way of praising God until the heart is sweetened and rested, and until it relaxes its grip on anything else it thinks that it needs.

It probably would have shocked my fans to find out how self-conscious I was at the height of my idol-dom. On August 1, 1987, I forced myself to create a self-confidence project, hoping to increase my self-esteem, by listing my positive traits as I saw them. I am a healthy person. I am very sensitive to others’ problems. I am an honest person, I am a good actor, I am an affectionate person, and I like to be open to suggestions and ready for a change if needed. I was embarrassed by how I looked—you already know about my zits. My paranoia grew when I discovered “Cameron” literally means “crooked nose.” I went straight to the mirror, examined my nose from every angle and realized with horror that my nose didn’t go straight down between my eyes—it went diagonally. All I could think about was my stupid crooked nose. I fretted over how ugly I was and wondered why anyone would want to be around someone so gross. Trying to be helpful, Dad said, “You’re on the cover of 14 magazines this month. Obviously somebody doesn’t think you’re ugly.

In a battle ‘Alī confronted a powerful enemy and after a fierce fight was able to throw the enemy to the ground and sit on his chest with his sword drawn. At this moment the enemy warrior spat in ‘Alī’s face, whereupon ‘Alī immediately disengaged himself and abstained from delivering a blow with his sword. The enemy warrior, who was an idol worshipper, had never seen such an event. He became agitated and asked ‘Alī why he had not killed him. The response of ‘Alī, which in the verses of the Mathnawī constitutes one of the masterpieces of Sufi poetry, was that ‘Alī was fighting at first for the preservation of the Truth, but once the enemy warrior spat in his face ‘Alī became angry, and he would never react on the basis of anger and certainly not get into a battle or slay someone for personal or selfish reasons. In Rūmī’s words, ‘Alī responded: Said he, “I wield the sword for the sake of the Truth, I am the servant of the Truth not the functionary of the body. I am the lion of the Truth, not the lion of passions, My action does witness bear to my religion.

If the Lord Allah lives only in the mosque, then to whom does the rest of the world belong? According to the Hindus, the Lord’s Name abides in the idol, but there is no truth in either of these claims.  || 1 ||   O Allah, O Raam, I live by Your Name. Please show mercy to me, O Master.  || 1 ||  Pause  ||   The God of the Hindus lives in the southern lands, and the God of the Muslims lives in the west. So search in your heart — look deep into your heart of hearts; this is the home and the place where God lives.  || 2 ||   The Brahmins observe twenty-four fasts during the year, and the Muslims fast during the month of Ramadaan. The Muslims set aside eleven months, and claim that the treasure is only in the one month.  || 3 ||   What is the use of bathing at Orissa? Why do the Muslims bow their heads in the mosque? If someone has deception in his heart, what good is it for him to utter prayers? And what good is it for him to go on pilgrimage to Mecca?  || 4 ||   You fashioned all these men and women, Lord. All these are Your Forms. Kabeer is the child of God, Allah, Raam. All the Gurus and prophets are mine.  || 5 ||   Says Kabeer, listen, O men and women: seek the Sanctuary of the One. Chant the Naam, the Name of the Lord, O mortals, and you shall surely be carried across.  || 6 || 2 ||   PRABHAATEE:  First, Allah created the Light; then, by His Creative Power, He made all mortal beings. From the One Light, the entire universe welled up. So who is good, and who is bad?

The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace? The heart's fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable. Yet the sons of earth are carrying this burden continually, challenging every word spoken against them, cringing under every criticism, smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them. Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort. He develops toward himself a kindly sense of humor and learns to say, "Oh, so you have been overlooked? They have placed someone else before you? They have whispered that you are pretty small stuff after all? And now you feel hurt because the world is saying about you the very things you have been saying about yourself? Only yesterday you were telling God that you were nothing, a mere worm of the dust. Where is your consistency? Come on, humble yourself, and cease to care what men think.

Thus He dethroned the king of Israel by the king of Assyria, and, in turn, the king of Assyria by the king of Babylon, the king of Babylon by the king of Persia, the king of Persia by Alexander, the king in Greece, the Greek kingdom by the Romans, the Romans by the Goths and the Turks. And if the world stands long enough, the Turks, too, will find someone to knock them off. That is the way it goes on and on, both in great and in small governments; both among emperors and kings we behold a constant seating and unseating. The whole world with its governments appears to be God’s cavalry tournament, with all of His horsemen stabbing and unseating each other. The rule is: Whoever lies prostrate, lies prostrate; whoever is mounted, is mounted. And all of this happens because of their injustice and their violence, and because it is their fault whenever evils and injustices prevail in a country. The devil, the supreme prince of the world, goads them on, so that they do not use the sword, committed to them by God, aright, just as the world also misuses all the other gifts of God. And yet the sword is necessary, as eating and drinking are. But because of their abuse of it God constantly wrests the sword from the fist of one and gives it to another. Sword and government always remain in the world, but the persons sitting on thrones must continue to topple and tumble as they deserve. But that is what deceived the Jews and hardened their hearts, so that they did not believe Habakkuk. Since they did not commit adultery and had no idols at the time, they assumed that they were godly and had a gracious God. Consequently they were not at all expecting God’s wrath. That is peculiar of these people down to the present day, as it is of all hypocrites and work-righteous: they always imagine that they above all others are the dear children. They cannot believe that they are deserving of wrath. They say, as we read in Micah 2:7: “Should this be said, O house of Jacob? Is the Spirit of the Lord impatient? etc.” For if they had acknowledged that they are sinners, they would have obeyed Habakkuk. They would have reformed fearfully and humbly, as the Ninevites did, and averted the punishment. But since they did not do this, it is certain that they regarded Habakkuk as a fool and idle preacher but themselves as godly, as innocent, and as the true children of God. And this is what we see our own clergy do even today. Amid the most terrible sins and blasphemies they think that they are serving God and are pleasing to Him.

Raphael looked like he might have laughed if he'd been younger and more cheerful. 'Why are you using the Jesuit dictionary?' 'How do you know what I'm using? A d it's the only Quechua dictionary.' 'It's probably shrine,'I said, and then when Clem frowned, not understanding, 'not idol.' Raphael nodded to me and I smiled, because he was taking it so gently. I would have burst out laughing if someone had translated Christchurch as Heathen God Temple in front of me.

We chose to turn away from God, including his laws. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not have false idols (anything you put before God, including power—the kind that tries to wipe out a race of humans, for example). When we turned away from Him, we turned away from his goodness. When laws are broken, people are broken. All hell broke loose, because we had the choice to allow it. He gave us free will. Think about it—even if you could force your crush to love you, would it be real love? Would you want that for someone you really love? God feels the same way. He would rather risk being hated because you had a choice to hate him than have everyone love Him because they were forced to. This chaos isn’t God’s fault, it’s ours. Then we ask, why didn’t God come down and stop the Holocaust? Oh, it’s not just the holocaust. People still kill each other today, ISIS as an example. To answer the question: first, if God did come down, would we recognize Him? How would we know it was Him? And didn’t He do just that in sending Jesus? And so many of the human race don’t believe He even did that! So what makes you think you would recognize Him now? Second, He did do something about the suffering—He created us. Those who really understand Christ’s heart would not only believe, but do something about it.

What does your worship look like? Anxiety, despair, shopping, primping, acting like someone you aren’t, acting stupid when you are smart, or acting like you don’t care when you do? Why do you do it? You are hoping that, if you worship it correctly, the idol will give you what you want. But idols are notoriously slow in responding.

After Jimena left, Serena sat in a chair and set her cello on the end pin between her knees. She loved the way she had to hug the cello when she played. She dreamed of meeting her idols some day in a master class or onstage, someone like Yo-Yo Ma or Han-Na Chang. She picked up her bow and began to play. The music flowed around her, sad and filled with longing.

A lot of Christian creatives are skeptical of other Christians, too. Many creative believers we’ve talked to feel undervalued in the church, so much so that the church no longer feels like home for them. It seems the only time the church needs them is when they want someone “artsy” to decorate the sanctuary for the Christmas Spectacular, or when they need a “creative” to be onstage to show the congregation that they can “relate” to the culture and appeal to those “other” generations.

When admitting you are wrong, you gain back the control others took away from you when making you lose it. That's why you must say sorry. It represents a change of attitude but not really a change of personality; The changes on the personality come later on, when, by controlling yourself better, you don't express anger. Because saying sorry means nothing but anger means a lot. You should not want to be an angry person. When you get angry, those who make you angry, win; They win control over your emotional state, your thoughts, your words and your behaviors. They may then accuse you of always being angry and never apologizing, but that's not where you should focus your attention. The main point here, is that you’re living on the basis of instinctive reaction and not awareness or consciousness. So, when you say sorry, you are acknowledging that there is no excuse for losing control over yourself. You should not be sorry for being angry. That's an emotion; and you can't feel sorry for feeling. When you’re angry, you are feeling. When you insult, however, you are losing, yourself, your self-control, your self-respect, and even your capacity to use what you know. More knowledge, makes you more aware, more frustrated, having more and higher expectations on others, and more angry too, more often as well. But that's your problem! No other people's problem! They are just being themselves. Most people really think they are perfect as they are, and that the problems they experience are all outside themselves. And by realizing that, you say sorry as if saying sorry for not being who you really are. And when doing it, you get back the control another person took away from you. It is actually not good when someone needs to say sorry too often to someone else, especially if it’s always the same individual. But that someone else often likes it, as it makes them feel superior. That’s because their ego needs that. They have low self-esteem. Most people do! And that’s why most people's behavior is wired to their ego. Their likes and dislikes are connected to a sense of self-importance and a desperate need to feel important, which they project on their idols, the famous and most popular among them. They admire what they seek the most. When they think they are not important, they offend, to get aggression, which is a desperate need for attention; and to feel like victims of life, which is a deeper state of need, in this case, related to sympathy; and they then blame the other for what he does, for his reactions; and when that other says sorry, they think they have power over that insane cycle in which they now live, and in which they incorporate anyone else, and which they now perfectly master. Their pride is built on arrogance, an arrogance emerged out of ignorance, ignorance composed from delusional cycles within a big illusion; but an illusion that makes sense to them, as if they were succeeding at merging truth with lie, darkness with light. Because the arrogant, the abusive and the violent are desperate. God made them blind after witnessing their crimes against moral and ethics - His own laws. And they want to see again, and feel the same pleasure they once felt when witnessing the true colors of the world during childhood. The arrogant want to reaffirm their sanity by acting insanely because they know no other way. And when you say sorry, you are saying to them that you don't belong there, to their world, and that you are sorry for playing their games. That drama belongs to them only, and not you. And yet, people interpret the same paradox as they choose. That is their experience of truth and how they put sense on a life without any. And when so much nonsense becomes popular, we call it common sense. When common sense becomes a reality, we call it science. And when science is able to theorize common sense, we call it wisdom. Then, we wonder why the wisdom of those we name wise, does not help.

behind every idol is a demon. Someone may say, “Well, that’s just an Old Testament problem.” No, it’s a New Testament problem too:

Another thing etched into my memory, was that someone stole my swimming suit from the wash line that ran from an upstairs window to a rickety wooden pole behind the house. That someone would steal clothing from a clothesline puts the desperation of people during the depression years into focus. Discovering this, I ran to tell Charlie the Cop…. Charlie was a mounted policeman who sat tall in the saddle, and he was my idol. He cut quite an impressive figure of authority in his blue uniform, badge, and highly shined, black riding boots. Charlie, Jersey City’s finest, carefully listened to my tale of woe and promised to get to the bottom of this serious criminal matter. I believed what he said and trusted him to get my itchy two- piece, woolen, swimsuit back. Years went by and he never did apprehend the culprits, but in my heart I know that this is still an open case with the Jersey City Police Department and Charlie is still out there looking! We respected the police and thought of them as friends. Charlie on his horse patrolled our area and was known and trusted by everyone. I wish that the police were thought of in the same way today.

Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God (Luke 6:20). I'm learning what it means to descend, which is so revolutionary it often leaves me gasping. I have been trying to ascend my entire life. Up, up, next level, a notch higher, the top is better, top of the food chain, all for God's work and glory, of course. The pursuit of ascension is crippling and has stunted my faith more than any other evil I've battled. It has saddled me with so much to defend, and it doesn't deliver. I need more and more of what doesn't work. I'm insatiable, and ironically, the more I accumulate, the less I enjoy any of it. Instead of satisfaction, it produces toxic fear in me; I'm always one slip away from losing it all. Consequently, my love for others is tainted because they unwittingly become articles for consumption. How is this person making me feel better? How is she making me stronger? How is he contributing to my agenda? What can this group do for me? I am an addict, addicted to the ascent and thus positioning myself above people who can propel my upward momentum and below those who are also longing for a higher rank and might pull me up with them. It feels desperate and frantic, and I'm so done being enslaved to the elusive top rung. When Jesus told us to 'take the lowest place' (Luke 14:10), it was more than just a strategy for social justice. It was even more than wooing us to the bottom for communion, since that is where He is always found. The path of descent becomes our own liberation. We are freed from the exhausting stance of defense. We are no longer compelled to be right and are thus relieved from the burden of maintaining some reputation. We are released from the idols of greed, control, and status. The pressure to protect the house of cards is alleviated when we take the lowest place. The ascent is so ingrained in my thought patterns that it has been physically painful to experience reformation at the bottom. The compulsion to defend myself against misrepresentation nearly put me in the grave recently. I was tormented with chaotic inner dialogues, and there were days I was so plagued with protecting my rung that I couldn't get out of bed. With every step lower, the stripping-away process was more excruciating. I had no idea how tightly I clung to reputation and approval or how selfishly I behaved to maintain it. Getting to the top requires someone else to be on the bottom; being right means someone else must be wrong. It is the nature of the beast.

[Dr. Henton] reindorced a lesson my pops tried to teach me with his hands: NEVER EVER EVER back down if you're right. If you have evaluated all the perspectives, gone around the round table, and come back around with the same opinion, then walk right up to the offending party and tell'em why you mad. I realized that as wild as I'd been up to that point, I still curbed my opinion ever so slightly because I was surrounded by conservative white people at Rollins. (202) You can't idolize and emulate forever. At some point, you gotta cut the cord and go for dolo. I thought of Locke and his idea of tubula rasa. I realized that I needed to build arguments, philosophies, and a style grounded in my era and experiences. ....I remember she called me a shotgun: "You have all this energy and it's unruly, but like a shotgun, you need the barrel to direct the buckshot just enough." (203) That was it for me. I wanted power, I wanted respect, and I never ever ever anyone to tell me about my face again. (208) ...money, power, and respect drive the world. (211) People were so competitive and saw every job someone else got as a job that they lost. I didn't agree and always told people what Cam'ron said: "Can't get paid in a earth this big? You worthless kid!" (212)

But Scripture treats the topic of idolatry far more subtly. An idol is anything we want more than God, anything we rely on more than God, anything we look to for greater fulfillment than God. Idolatry is thus the hidden sin driving all other sins. For example, why do we lie? Because we fear the disapproval of people more than we want the approval of God. Or because we value our reputation more than we value our relationship with God. Or we are trying to manipulate someone into giving us something we think we need more than we need God. The more visible sin (lying) is driven by an invisible turn of our hearts toward something other than God as the ultimate source of security and happiness.

When we attack sin, we are either attacking idols outside the church and calling sinners to repentance, or attacking idols inside the church and calling sinners to repentance. While there is a crucial difference between talking to a corpse and talking to a resurrected corpse, the sin is still sin. And the sin is always a crutch or a cover: an attempt at finding safety, security, comfort, peace, meaning in something or someone other than Christ. And almost always, those crutches were snatched up from family, friends, television, celebrities, etc., grasping for what looks safe or what looks cool.

Turned out that being with someone is an acquired skill. There is an art to it. Basically, you have to watch your partner take a chisel -- or a war hammer, depending on the day -- and chip away at the ideal version of them that you’ve created in your mind. The person you fall in love with is always slightly different from the person you need to stay in love with. More real and more flawed, but also more complex and better defined. There were a few things about Zuha that bothered me. I adored that she was smarter than I was, but she could slice me to pieces with her wit whenever she wanted. I'd always known this about her but her words when they were sharp -- whether because she was in a mood or because she was just being careless -- now cut deep when before they’d just stung. I could also be carelessly mean. It was something we were learning to live with. She was surprisingly human in other ways too. Her hands were bitterly cold, her pretty long hair somehow got everywhere, and her incurable lust for shawarma wasn’t ideal. Garlic breath is real, after all. The thing about being in love is that if you can endure the sight of the idol you’ve fallen for crumbling before you, and learn to love the truth of who your partner is as you discover it, then you’ll have someone to take your hand as she’s reading, and who’ll lean over and whisper in your ear, ‘Let us be true to one another...

PART 3 THIS QUOTE OF MINE IS EXCLUSIVELY CONCERNED WITH WAR - HOW IS IT , THAT THIS CHRONIC DISEASE OF HUMAN MISERY HUMAN EXISTENCE IS AFFLICTED WITH IS OMNIPRESENT AND CONTINUES TO GROW IN ALL THIS PROSPERITY OF TODAY ? AND THE WORLD IS HEADING FOR A NEW WAR THANKS TO POLITICIANS SUCH AS PUTIN ! ! THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING AS THE HORRORS OF WAR ONCE AGAIN - NOBODY INTERVENING YET WE ARE ALL ONE WORLD COMMUNITY ! - ARE UNFOLDING BEFORE THEIR VERY EYES ! , BEFORE EVERYONE'S EYES THIS INDIFFERENT THEY ARE ALL ARE TO '' LIFE '' ! MAN HAS LEARNED NOTHING FROM THE PAST ! WERE ARE THOSE FEW PEOPLE WHO ARE STILL CAPABLE OF THOUGHT TO PUT A STOP TO THIS MADNESS , TO STAND FOR REASON AND LOVE OF PEACE , FOR DOES NOT EVERYBODY SPEAK OF LOVE ? , INSTEAD OF HEADING WITH A BLIND OBSESSION AND FANATICALLY FOR THE NEXT WAR IN MODERNITY ? , AS A MATTER OF FACT , AS FANATICALLY AS THOSE CONVICTIONS THEY HOLD FAST TO ! WHERE ? WHERE IS REASON ? WHERE IS LOVE OF PEACE TO BE FOUND ? THOSE ENDORSING NOTHING BUT WAR , SIDING WITH THE VERDICT OF REACTIONARY VIEWS WHICH CAN NO LONGER BE DESIGNATED HUMAN AS THE EFFECT OF THEIR ALLEGIANCE TO '' TRUTH'' AND '' LOVE '' AND SUCHLIKE FOR THEM NOT TO BE IN A BAD TEMPER , WHICH THEY ARE ANYWAY , INVARIABLY SO ! HOW IS ALL THAT POSSIBLE WITHIN SOMETHING THAT IS SO FOND OF VIEWING ITSELF AS '' HUMANE '' , PART OF WHICH IS TO SUBSIDE INTO PROFOUND THEORIES TO MAKE FOR MORE '' HUMANE QUALITY OF LIFE '' ? AND I KEEP ASKING MYSELF : WHERE DO I LIVE WHEN ALL THIS ATROCITY IS BROUGHT ABOUT WITHOUT ANY REMORSE ? WHO IS YET CAPABLE OF THINKING IN THIS WORLD ? WHO IS TO MAKE A CLEAN SLATE AT LENGTH BY TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT MAN ? GIVE YOUR LIKES TO YOUR SUPERSTARS AND TO YOUR POLITICIANS WHOM YOU VOTE FOR THEM TO EFFECT MORE AND MORE WARS AND TO TEACH YOU HOW TO WAGE WARS AS PART OF YOUR EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS FOR YOU TO BECOME '' THE SCHOLARS OF WAR '' ! , AND GIVE THEM TO ALL THOSE OTHER FALSE IDOLS THAT YOU ADORE AND CANNOT RENOUNCE LEST MORTAL DREAD SET IN AND ENRICH THEM BY YOUR STUPIDITY , YOU UNCOMPROMISING CAMP FOLLOWERS , YOU WHO ARE NOT ODIOUS TO YOURSELVES WITH YOUR INSATIABLE UNREASONING COMPLACENCY IN HAVING DESECRATED WHAT IS HUMAN ONCE AND FOR ALL ! I WANT NONE OF YOUR LIKES EVER IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT THAT SOMEONE SHOULD ACTUALLY READ THIS ! AND IF THIS IS NOT THE TRUTH ON WAR THEN SOMEONE NEEDS TO EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT WAR IS ! LIFE ? LOVE ? PEACE ? FREEDOM ?...

lyrics tell the story of someone who is afraid that the one they love will turn away if they see their true face, and so, they wear a mask. There are various possible interpretations of “mask” here, but from BTS’s perspective, the mask could be the image they present as idols before the fans.

Minimalism is countercultural. We live in a world that idolizes celebrities. They are photographed for magazines, interviewed on the radio, and recorded for television. Their lives are held up as the gold standard and are envied by many. People who live minimalist lives are not championed by the media in the same way. They don't fit into the consumerist culture promoted by the corporations and politicians. Yet, they live a life that is attractive and inviting. While most people are chasing after success, glamour, and fame, minimalism calls out to us with a smaller, quieter, calmer voice. It invites us to slow down, consume less, but enjoy more. And when we meet someone living a simplified life we often recognize we have the chasing the wrong things all along.

An idol has such a controlling position in your heart that you can spend most of your passion and energy, your emotional and financial resources, on it without a second thought. It can be family and children, or career and making money, or achievement and critical acclaim, or saving “face” and social standing. It can be a romantic relationship, peer approval, competence and skill, secure and comfortable circumstances, your beauty or your brains, a great political or social cause, your morality and virtue, or even success in the Christian ministry. When your meaning in life is to fix someone else’s life, we may call it “co-dependency” but it is really idolatry. An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, “If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.

All characters are defined by enduring traits, and every trait grows stronger with moments of consciousness. When we think no one else knows, we perpetuate that moment in us. A moment we turn away someone asking for help, or help someone needy never asking, When we decide to believe in a one, and when disappointment manifests in an idol. The moment hatred clouds our vision, and the moment we bury vengeance and carry on... moments shape us.

The thing that makes God the perfect spiritual object is precisely that he is abstract-as Hegel saw. He is not a concrete individuality, and so He does not limit our development by His own personal will and needs. When we look for the "perfect" human object we are looking for someone who allows us to express our will completely, without any frustration or false notes. We want an object that reflects a truly ideal image of ourselves. But no human object can do this; humans have wills and counterwills of their own, in a thousand ways they can move against us, their very appetites offend us. God's greatness and powers is something that we can nourish ourselves in, without its being compromised in any way by the happenings of the world. No human partner can offer this assurance because the partner is real. However much we may idealize and idolize him, he inevitably reflects earthly decay and imperfection. And as he is our ideal measure of value, this imperfection falls back upon us. If your partner is your "All" then any shortcoming in him becomes a major threat to you.

First, there is the burden of pride. The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol.

It was only now that he realized the meaning of words such as 'adore', 'prostate', 'worship', 'treat as idol or Gods' that poets used when they spoke of a beloved. It was only that he understood how it was possible for someone to love a human being in the way people love flocks of birds as they go back to their nests on an evening bathed in the orange light scattered on a river's bank; the way people can love the Raga Bhairavi being played on the santur in the last watch of the night; the way people can love the sound of a cataract in the background of snow-clad peaks when the dark night's collars is sundered by the first rays of morning; the way people love their doorstep when they return home from a long journey; the way people love beautiful carpets, heart-ravishing paintings: they just want to go on looking, watching, hearing, with no desire to possess, no expectation of a result, no experience of time passing, no illusion of something achieved.

Rules of Jihad: 1)    Jihad is sanctioned by Allah. There is no higher authority; therefore it is always justified.   2)    Never abide by any rules or limitations. The ends justify ANY means no matter how shocking. Jihad can be any action which advances Islam or weakens the Kaffirs whether by a group or an individual. Even donating money to pay for someone else’s Jihad is a type of Jihad itself.   3)    ALWAYS play the victim. Mohammed twisted his situation around. Although he had attacked innocent people without provocation he blamed them. He said that they had “stopped others from becoming Muslims” and had worshiped idols. The attack was their fault and the Muslims were the victims, not the Kaffirs.   4)    Keep repeating this and people will eventually begin to believe it. If you can persuade the victim to accept the blame you have won, because retaliation requires a sense of injustice. If the victim accepts the blame they will turn their hatred towards themselves.   The Bible contains acts of war by the Jews against their enemies which were approved of by their God. This approval was applied only to specific battles and specific instances in history. It was not part of an ongoing strategy to take over the world. The God of the Bible did not give approval for relentless, unprovoked violence against unbelievers.

For the first time I was beginning to discern a God whom I actually wanted to live for. I was beginning to discover the motivation of Paul when he proclaimed, “Christ’s love compels us” (2 Cor. 5: 14). All my life I’d tried to be good to avoid hell, or the ugly-stick flogging, or my stepmother’s beatings with a two-by-four. But while most people would undoubtedly be better at behaving well with these frightful motivations than I ever was, no one could ever be transformed by these sorts of motivations. Threatening motivations address behavior, but they can never transform our identity. They motivate people to change as a means of protecting themselves, but for this reason they can never move us beyond ourselves to become someone fundamentally different from who we currently are. And threatening motivations can certainly never transform us into people with an other-oriented, self-sacrificial, loving character. Only a motivation that is anchored in love can do this.

the graven image, the idol of the title, was a God who always acted the way we thought he should. Or more to the point—he was a God who supported our plans, how we thought the world and history should go. That is a God of our own creation, a counterfeit god. Such a god is really just a projection of our own wisdom, of our own self. In that way of operating, God is our “accomplice,” someone to whom we relate as long as he is doing what we want. If he does something else, we want to “fire” him, or “unfriend him,” as we would any personal assistant or acquaintance who was insubordinate or incompetent.

The best way to live. Everybody eventually surrenders to something or someone. If not to God, you will surrender to the opinions or expectations of others, to money, to resentment, to fear, or to your own pride, lusts, or ego. You were designed to worship God — and if you fail to worship him, you will create other things (idols) to give your life to. You are free to choose what you surrender to, but you are not free from the consequences of that choice. E. Stanley Jones said, “If you don’t surrender to Christ, you surrender to chaos.

God could have made a single self-sufficient sex that felt perfectly complete and didn't long for anybody, but He didn't. Why not? Do you know what I think? I think God made us male and female because we need to long for each other. It's not good not to long for someone; it's not good to be absorbed in yourself. Somehow, each of us needs to get out of self. With the help of God's grace, the marriage of a man and woman can make that happen. Solitary sex can't do that, it sinks him into a looking-glass idol of the self. Casual sex can't do that, it merely uses the other for the purposes of the self. But a marriage with Christ at the center of it pulls you right out of yourself. It teaches each partner, the husband and the wife, to forget about self for a while in care and sacrifice for the other. We come to ourselves by losing ourselves.

And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.” – Revelation 13:15   Notice that John does not call it a statue or idol, but uses the Greek word eikon, which means “a mirror like image”, but what John is describing may not even be supernatural in nature.   Broadcasting The Abomination   We currently have two technologies that can project a mirror like image, and to someone in the past it would appear as if the image was given life. Those technologies are TV and hologram. John knew enough to know that he was not seeing the actual person of the Antichrist at the location, but something that looked like him in every way. How could John describe a TV or holographic image with the

As the world continues to find new ways to tear itself apart, humans still love, hate, feel rejected and yarn to be close to someone.

{8:10} For if anyone sees someone with knowledge sitting down to eat in idolatry, will not his own conscience, being infirm, be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols?

All sin is idolatry and unbelief in some form, because any time we sin, we have failed to trust God for something, and we have preferred the pleasures of our sin to Him. For example, if you are a Christian, but you are willing to sin for someone you love or like a lot, then that person or relationship has become an idol to you. You are willing to go against God and your beliefs for that person or relationship.

If the Lord Allah lives only in the mosque, then to whom does the rest of the world belong? According to the Hindus, the Lord’s Name abides in the idol, but there is no truth in either of these claims.  || 1 ||   O Allah, O Raam, I live by Your Name. Please show mercy to me, O Master.  || 1 ||  Pause  ||   The God of the Hindus lives in the southern lands, and the God of the Muslims lives in the west. So search in your heart — look deep into your heart of hearts; this is the home and the place where God lives.  || 2 ||   The Brahmins observe twenty-four fasts during the year, and the Muslims fast during the month of Ramadaan. The Muslims set aside eleven months, and claim that the treasure is only in the one month.  || 3 ||   What is the use of bathing at Orissa? Why do the Muslims bow their heads in the mosque? If someone has deception in his heart, what good is it for him to utter prayers? And what good is it for him to go on pilgrimage to Mecca?  || 4 ||   You fashioned all these men and women, Lord. All these are Your

People in Haiti eat dirt because it gives their starving bodies a false sense of satisfaction. But mud pies don't fill. They merely mask real hunger. [...] I saw the mud pies as a metaphor for the life of any Christian who has ever looked to something or someone other than God for fulfillment.

Keep yourselves from idols." The warning isn't given to them because it wasn't a real danger or because there was an off chance someone might fall into idolatry. It was given because this is our root problem on any given day. It is what we, especially as followers of Jesus, must fight against.

In the haste to imitate an idol, in the race to become someone else, we forget the most important lesson. How to be ourselves.