We Become What We Worship

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. (I Peter 2:21).

One of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s best loved short stories is The Great Stone Face, first published in 1850. The story, set in a New England valley, centers around an unusual rock formation that displays the profile of a man’s face. A local legend prophesies that, one day, the man whose silhouette is etched in stone will come and live in the valley. He will be gentle, wise, and good.

A resident of the valley named Ernest has lived his entire life anticipating the day when the old man of the mountain will appear. When several native sons, who have moved away and become famous, come back to visit, he is optimistic that one of them will be the man they are waiting for. Alas, none of them match the profile on the mountain. This makes him sad but he continues to believe the prophecy. In the meantime, he devotes himself to loving and serving others, and many in the valley benefit from his wisdom and goodness.

One day, a famous poet, who has been raised in the valley, returns to visit. Ernest feels certain that he will be the one they have been waiting for. But the poet strongly objects, insisting that he is not worthy to be compared to that noble profile etched in stone. That evening, however, as the poet observes the way Ernest interacts with the local residents, he happens to look up at the stone face in the mountain. In a flash, the truth becomes clear: “Behold! Behold!”, he shouts. “Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great Stone Face!”

Hawthorne’s story paints a beautiful picture of one of the greatest truths in life: we resemble that on which we fix our attention. Christian philosopher James K. A. Smith says it this way: “We become what we worship because what we worship is what we love” (You Are What You Love, p. 23). Though often unrecognized, this truth is of supreme importance and has eternal significance. We can state the matter this way: we become what we ought to be only when we worship who we ought to worship.

This helps us to understand why the Bible is so opposed to idolatry. Worshiping a false god is not only wrong, it’s dumb! If you put your trust in the money god, your life will be characterized by greed, materialism, and insecurity. If you bow before the sex god, you will soon be controlled by your lusts and perversions. If you worship a bull, don’t be surprised if you start acting like one! The logic is irrefutable. Like gods, like people (see Ps. 115:4-8).

Consider how this principle relates to the worship of Jesus Christ. Those who worship him will become like him. On this point, we can easily agree. But which Jesus are we talking about? Jesus as he is revealed in the New Testament? Or Jesus as he is conceived in the mind of the worshipper. Getting the answer right is a matter of life and death.

In a sermon based on Ephesians 4:20-22, George MacDonald (1824-1905) asks the question: “How have we learned Christ?” He then answers his own question by saying: “It ought to be a startling thought, that we may have learned him wrong.” Pushing his point even further, he insists that having the wrong conception of Christ is “far worse than not to have learned him at all: his place is occupied by a false Christ, hard to exorcise!” (Unspoken Sermons, p. 307).

In many churches today, the true Jesus has been replaced by an imposter: the hipster Jesus, the political Jesus, the therapeutic Jesus, the prosperity Jesus, the social justice Jesus, etc. Like the misguided Christians in Corinth, many today worship “another Jesus” (II Cor. 11:4), not the Jesus revealed in the New Testament. They are devoted to a Jesus of their own imagination. This is deadly serious because the Jesus you worship determines the person you are!

After his resurrection, in order to authenticate his identity, Jesus showed his disciples the scars of his crucifixion still visible in his hands and side (see Jn. 20:20). It was the wounds in his risen body that enabled them to know for sure it was the true Jesus standing in front of them and not some pretender. The real Jesus is the one with scars; the one who dies, yet lives.

Jesus called his first disciples by saying, “Follow me” (see Mk. 1:17, etc.). He was doing more than inviting them to accompany him as he traveled from town to town. He was calling them to imitate his example, to model their lives after his. And because dying and rising created the basic contours of his life, dying and rising should create the basic contours of our lives as well. This doesn’t mean that we are to replicate what Jesus did on Good Friday and Easter. Those events are unique and unrepeatable. But it does mean that we are to imitate the way Jesus daily exhibited self-denying, status-renouncing, other-oriented love.

In his book J-Curve, Paul E. Miller describes how the dying and rising of Jesus is meant to shape us, not just save us.

The normal Christian life repeatedly re-enacts the dying and rising of Jesus. I call it the J-Curve, because, like the letter J, Jesus’s life first went down into death, then up into resurrection. Just like the earthly life of Jesus, the J ends higher than it starts. It’s the pattern not only of Jesus’s life, but of our lives – of our everyday moments.... Our lives mirror Jesus’s. (p. 19).

So, here’s the deal. If you worship a Jesus of your own imagination, you will become what you worship. And because you have created a deity in your own image, you will become a modified version of who you already are. But, if you worship the real Jesus – the dying and rising Jesus, the one with scars – you will, by definition, become like him. Death and resurrection will begin to characterize your daily life as well. With the apostle Paul, you will one day be able to authenticate your identity by testifying: “I bear in my body the scars that show I belong to Jesus” (Gal. 6:17 NLT). So, perhaps we should put a large sign on the doors of the church visible to all who enter: “Warning! You become what you worship.”

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