Devin Schadt / January 7th, 2025
Theological Made Practical Series | #25
1494 Words / Read time: 7 minutes
How to Know If You Are a Self-Idolator
How Many People Really Believe in and Live for God?
According to a Gallup poll in May 2023, 74% of Americans believe in God. *
Here are some other findings from the poll:
- 51% of Americans believe in all five spiritual entities, including God, angels, heaven, hell, and the devil
- 31% of Americans believe in some, but not all, of the five spiritual entities
- 11% of Americans do not believe in any of the five spiritual entities
- 7% of Americans are not sure about all of the five spiritual entities
The percentage of Americans who believe in God has been dropping over the past two decades.
While the majority of the American population profess belief in God, nonbelief is increasing.
In fact in 2017, 87% of Americans believed in God.
Why is Belief in God Decreasing?
My hunch is that Christians and the practical outcome of their lives, aren’t all that different than people who are worldly.
If Christians act like the world, look like the world, live like the world…
why would anyone want to be a Christian?
It is easier just to be worldly without any moral restrictions.
Just a cursory look at believers indicates that people profess that they believe in God but in practicality live as though they do not.
My friend speaking of such a person says, “He is a professing theist but a practicing agnostic.”
People tell themselves that they love God and that He is the most important “thing” in their life.
But as the Prophet and God Incarnate said,
“This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me” (Isaiah 29:13; Ezekiel 33:32; Matthew 15:7-9).
Belief in God is Never an Intellectual Profession Only.
To believe in God means that yes, you intellectually believe in Him, but also live for Him.
You surrender your life to Him.
You go on the God adventure, forsaking reliance on the world’s promises.
Many Christians/Catholics make a fundamental mistake:
They do not really live for God, but rather believe that God exists for them.
They live for the world and believe that God will give them the world.
They believe that the purpose of God is to help them win the world.
The first commandment of the decalogue states:
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
You shall not have other gods beside me” (Exodus 20:2)
The second states that you shall not make any idols to worship (See Exodus 2:4-6; Deuteronomy 5:8).
Worldly Motivations
I’m reading James Clear’s book Atomic Habits (15 million copies sold). **
Approximately halfway through the book James outlines what he believes are the underlying motivations for our habits:
Conserve energy
Obtain food and water
Find love and reproduce
Connect and bond with others
Win social acceptance and approval
Reduce uncertainty
Achieve status and privilege
Notice that God is not on Jame’s list.
Notice also that every motive is born from the motivation of personal survival or personal success.
This is slavery to Egypt (the world). This is self-idolatry.
Self-idolatry is believing that you are the most important person in your AND everyone else’s life.
Every motivation and action are to benefit you personally.
The self-idolator believes that God “Esse”, “being itself” is at his service rather than him being at God’s service.
True, the Godman, Jesus, says, “I did not come to be served but to serve and to lay down my life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45; John 13: 1-17).
But why would He come to serve us?
One reason is to free us from our self-centeredness and to liberate us from the shackles of self-idolatry.
Self-Idolatry can be expressed as the reversal of Christ’s profession of His mission:
I am to be served rather than to serve—unless of course to serve another benefits me…then I serve others to serve myself.
How can we profess to be Christian if we do not take for ourselves the mission of Christ?
How can we claim that Christ is our top priority if we do not serve Him as He serves us?
Many Christians will be surprised that heaven is not for them.
Heaven is a place, but that place is in God.
Heaven is the bliss of living in an eternal relationship of self-giving love with God who is relationship itself.
If you don’t have a relationship with God—who is relationship—now on earth, you certainly won’t have it in heaven.
Heaven is the continuation, and escalation of that which we do on earth.
Hell is the continuation and de-escalation of your life on earth.
If you worship yourself now, you will eternally commit self- idolatry with the ultimate self-worshipper, Satan himself.
Wonder who will reign in that domain?
The difference between heaven and hell is that in heaven, God shares His glory, but in hell Satan demands all the glory.
How to Know if You Are a Self-idolator:
1. You don’t think about God when you first wake up.
Your first thoughts are about money, your work, what’s for breakfast, your endeavors and projects, your favorite podcast, what you will be posting on social, how to win in life, how to get the attention you “deserve,” how to get more sex etc.
2. You don’t surrender yourself to God at the beginning of your day.
If you do address God, it is for the purpose of asking him to bless your day, to aid you in your endeavors, while neglecting to surrender yourself to His service.
3.. You don’t carve out time for Him.
You don’t spend adequate time in prayer for the purpose of knowing Him, loving Him and allowing Him to love you.
4. You constantly ask Him to bless you while infrequently asking Him how you can serve and bless Him.
5. You give Him your pithy leftovers.
At the end of a day, or the end of a week, you offer up a lame prayer, or you put a five-dollar bill in the collection basket. Your heart isn’t in it. Your words and offerings are not born of sacrificial love.
6. You reserve your first fruits for yourself.
You don’t give Him (charitable organizations) 10% off the top of your income.
7. You are preoccupied with money, status, prestige, prominence, acceptance, human approval and the like.
There are many more signs, but this is a good start.
How to Stop the Self-idolatry:
Begin slow.
Be prepared.
To detoxify yourself from self-worship is utterly painful…but ultimately liberating.
It is the most arduous of all detox programs.
It is the purification of the false-self.
I will only offer three action steps that constitute the very foundation of God-worship rather than self-idolatry.
1. Upon waking, think of Him first. Thank him for Him and for you.
2. After this prostrate yourself before Him and say to Him with sincerity and intentionality:
I am here to serve You. I am reporting for duty. Not my will but thine be done.
3. Before work, before eating, before showering, and especially before looking at your #*!@ phone, carve out at least 15 minutes to be with God in silence.
Jesus commands us to “Learn from Me.”
Read His Word, His Gospel, His life, His words.
Before you read the Gospel, ask the Holy Spirit to come and aid you in your conversation with Christ.
“For God does not ration the Holy Spirit” (John 3:34).
“But if any of you want wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men abundantly, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him” (James 1:5).
Ask Jesus to disclose to you who He is, what He wants, and for the gift to know Him and to become like Him.
This is Only the Beginning.
If you do these things daily, you will gradually cease to live for human acceptance and approval, status and worldly success…
all of which enslave you to other’s opinion, shackle you to comparisons and even if you “gain the world”, will eventually betray you and leave you miserable.
You will however, become a son of God, who is not swayed by fads and human opinion, who is joyful, peaceful, resilient, full of charity and magnanimity.
The world and the Word may appear to be similar.
But that one little difference, the letter ‘L’ in world is significant.
‘L’ stands for lie.
The world and its offerings are a deception that robs us of the freedom, joy, and peace of living in Him, for Him.
Paradoxically, when you live for Him, He is for you.
When you live for yourself: Amen you have received your pathetic reward.
As God through the prophet says:
“Return to Me and I will return to you” (Malachi 3:7).
May God grace you with the courage to banish worldliness, self-idolatry and become the man your destined to be in Christ.
** https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits; pp 127-129
Image: Echo and Narcissus (1903) by John William Waterhouse. The painting captures the tragic moment from Greek mythology where Narcissus, entranced by his reflection, is oblivious to the forlorn Echo who watches him in despair. Credit: Google Art Project. Public Domain.
Devin Schadt | Executive Director of the Fathers of St. Joseph
Ite ad Joseph
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