We once bought a foreclosure and renovated it. The house was a complete gut job, both inside and out. Its original 1980’s wallpaper covered nearly every room in the house. So we removed walls, stripped out cabinets, and redid all the flooring. The cedar shake roof was worn and covered in mold, so we replaced it with a metal roof. We bought new appliances, bathtubs, and even a new air conditioner.
Then we got to work outside.
It was difficult to tell from the street how big the yard was because an invasive tree had taken over the acre and a half lot, shading out all the other trees and bushes. Brazilian Pepper Trees are native to South America and have invaded much of southern Florida. They create an impenetrable canopy, blocking sunlight and harming native plants and trees. You can’t simply spray weed killer on them and expect them to die. They must be removed by hand. Needless to say, it took us a few years before they were eradicated from our property. And even then, we would periodically find evidence of the trees creeping and stretching their way across the yard again, and we’d have to once again do the hard work to remove them.
We now live in Georgia where another non-native plant, the Kudzu vine, blankets the roadsides. It too is just as invasive. When it’s out of control, all you see is the vine. It wraps itself around trees, power lines, and abandoned buildings, crisscrossing from one standing object to the next—like an intricate spider’s web.
There’s a lot of similarity to these invasive plants and the idols of our heart.
Like the Brazilian Pepper or the Kudzu vine, idols are an invasive species in our hearts; they don’t belong there. We were created to love and worship our Maker and Creator God alone; he is the true King of our hearts. He alone is worthy of all worship. He alone can rescue and save us. He alone gives our life meaning and purpose.
But because of the fall of man, our hearts are broken by sin. We don’t love God with all our heart. Instead, we turn to worship false gods. We look to substitute gods and give them honor and praise and worship rather than the One who made us. We turn to these idols to give our life meaning, hope, and purpose. We look to people, work, achievements, comforts, material things, and more to give us what only God can give.
These idols become like vines, taking deep root in our hearts. They grow and spread and stretch their way throughout our hearts as we turn to them time and again for help and rescue. They twist themselves around our heart, choking our love for God. They grow dense, blocking the Light of Life. Like a tree draped in Kudzu, we grow weak without the spiritual nourishment that comes when we abide in and cling to Christ alone. We find ourselves spiritually parched and our growth stagnant.
Like any invasive plant in our yard, idols don’t disappear when we ignore them or pretend they aren’t there. Or when we minimize their influence in our lives. They just continue to grow and spread. We must take drastic measures to remove them. We must rip them up by the roots. We must eradicate them. This is hard work and like the Pepper Trees in our yard, we need help from others. A team of friends came to our house and helped us remove the trees. Likewise, we can’t tackle our idols on our own; we need godly and wise friends who can help us identify the things in our life we worship apart from God. They can help us see how we’ve turned the good things God gives us into something we turn to for life and hope. And they can encourage us as we do the hard work, digging in, and ripping them out.
The thing about idolatry is that eradicating it is a lifetime work. It’s something we have to tend to each day. Like a gardener looking after his garden, we have to look after our hearts. We must be on the lookout for idols and guard against any counterfeit loves. It’s easy to remove one idol only to replace it with another one. That’s why we must also plant a greater love for Christ in its place. We do this by focusing on who he is and what he has done. We do this by dwelling on the gospel and what it means for us to be saved by grace. We do this by abiding in Christ through our union with him. And the more our love for our Savior grows—the more we find in Christ our meaning, hope, identity, purpose, and life—the less we’ll turn to our idols and the weaker their grip on us will be.
The Bible is filled with agrarian analogies and it’s no wonder; there is much we can learn from observing this world God created. Perhaps there’s a good lesson learned from invasive species in our own backyard. May the destruction such species cause be a cautionary tale for the soil of our hearts.
