The World and Idols: How and Why a Tragic Flaw Happens

Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Col 3:5  

Fossilized Fear and A Tragic Flaw

It is a complex subject yes. But there is a sense in which (speaking from the point of view of my religious faith) this can be classified simply as fossilized fear.

Fear is powerful. And the fear of failure is very real. The scythe of an exam can paralyze. It can hang over one’s life like an ogre. This is because the world culture is predicated upon success and not failure. You succeed and the doors to utopia are opened. But you fail and the world buries you.

This fear can be as strong as death. And the irony is that this malady afflicts, especially, the very bright people amongst our midst!

The fear of being discovered later that one isn’t as bright as he makes believe can be mind numbing. And this pressure only grows larger as the exams approach! It becomes a tyranny, and fearing a nervous breakdown, the individual rebels – or he falls sick.

One way out is to sit the exam in his sickness, and later, if he fails, to use his sickness as an excuse. Or he might simply refuse to take the exams and recant school altogether.

He takes, as it were, a huge step of faith from the conventional to unconventional. Others can sweat themselves to death in the rat race to become number one and win prizes and plaudits from the world. He breaks free from that prison. But he enters into another prison, that of self-glorification. And that is the most pervasive of all prisons.

His books, his vast knowledge and his mind become his friends and his gods.

On the surface this might sound idealistic, and even glamorous. It may even resemble the Christian faith, but there is a huge difference. The one is a theist, and the other an atheist. The one has one God only who directs all his life, and the other is his own god, with corollary gods which he picks from the world.

Part of the outsider’s tragic flaw is born of this: he has no one fixed abode. He is eclectic. He denies, he repudiates, he negates, he contravenes and he differs. A tragic flaw therefore, in one sense, is really the failure of an individual to cope in a fast changing world. Lacking the courage to trust himself fully, he subsequently blows into a full scorn for everything beautiful in life including God.

And it is precisely at this point that the tragedy of his life begins.

Why a Tragic Flaw Happens

The first statement of the Bible establishes the existence of God. ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ 

But the atheist takes the war to God’s door when he denies his existence. It is an act of rebellion, and in a secular sense, it is akin to committing treason.

For John in the beginning of his book writes, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’

Next, God’s first commandment is forthright: ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’(Exo 20:3).  

But the atheist stands by his word. And God stands by his word. And so the battle is set in array. And the dawn of a dark tragedy begins to loom large in the horizon.

Each one of us has an inborn (though faint) knowledge of God. Each one of us has inborn appetite to know more, hence the endless questions with which children bombard their parents.

It is from those questions (if you can remember well) that we began to perceive the greater mystery which breathes over our lives.

The Children of Wrath

We are all rebels, for ‘there is none that doeth good, no, not one.’ We are all ‘children of disobedience’ and ‘the children of wrath’ (Eph 2:2-3). But meekly we admit our guilt before God and he forgives. But not so the atheist. It is this wrath which drives him mad. And by his rebellion he thinks to kill God from his mind and life.

But he can’t, because he is made in the image of God. He has the breath of God in him, and he has a soul which cries and sings like a baby. But he refuses to hear. And the battle rages.  

We are not just physical beings but we are also spiritual. And our lives take a complete different trajectory when we deny one from the other.

I’m convinced it is this dichotomy which the world calls a tragic flaw. But it is not a flaw. It is a rebellion, and it is worse than witchcraft. It is idolatry (1Sam 15:23a).

The Tragic Flaw and Sin

We want happiness, but we can’t be happy without peace. And being God created human beings possessing flesh and blood and a heart, we can’t have peace without God. For all issues of life are in the heart. And who can know the heart of man except God?

God is not just a spirit but a personal being too. He gets hurt, and he is jealous. He cries and he laughs too. He can be our friend or our enemy according to what we choose.

But above all God cares. That is why he wouldn’t want anyone to rest on a false hope like that of trusting in an idol.

Ultimately anyone who lives in sin is tragically flawed, and it is that flaw which God wants to correct.

Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying, How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you. Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD: They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. Pro 1:20-31