Guest Post! Casey Miller pt. 2

And now, the epic conclusion to...
"Idolatry and Identity as Illustrated by The Muppets"

IDENTITY-

Let me start this next section, which I promise will tie back to the first, with another analogy to the Muppets. This time I want you to consider Elmo, and his Puppet master Kevin Clash. Now, Kevin Clash was not the first to control Elmo. You can watch episodes from before he came on and see for yourself. It is a strange thing to watch. I find myself thinking "WHAT! That's not Elmo! Who IS that? Some imposter, I'd wager!" When someone else controls Elmo, he still looks and maybe even acts a little like Elmo, but he is not Elmo. This can even be seen, though not as obviously, in the new Muppet movie. Most of the original puppeteers and writers are gone. While Kermit, Miss Piggy, and the rest all look and act like they used to, there is something missing. They're just people with a puppet on their arm trying to ACT like Kermit or Miss Piggy. While they may do a pretty good imitation, it's still just a copy; a vestige of what the original actors and writers created. Elmo is only Elmo on the arm of Kevin Clash, Kermit is only Kermit on the arm of Jim Henson and Miss Piggy is only Piggy on the arm of Frank Oz. 

This is our relationship to Christ. Everything we are is an extension of Christ. He lives in us and through us, and without Him; we are just a lump of fabric that will pass away with the rest of the material world. When we let something else fill us, we are a mockery of ourselves - an imposter. We look like ourselves, act like ourselves, yet we are not ourselves. When we let Christ fill us and be alive in us, we become our true selves, the “us” we were meant to be.

Some people might hear this and say, " If we all have to be like Christ, we will all be the same. What about the beauty of individual personalities?" To answer that, let's return to the analogy.

We have determined that Elmo is not Elmo when he is not puppeteered by Kevin Clash. He is inseparable from Kevin Clash, and yet, he is NOT Kevin Clash. He has his own personality and character. In reading through a "Making of the Muppet Show" book, I learned a lot about the creation of Characters. I learned that, while the Actors and Writers do a lot of shaping and molding to make the characters, it's ultimately the Characters who create themselves. They take on a personality of their own that either takes off or fails, and it's the actor and writer's jobs to tune into where that character is going and fall in line, so to speak. So Elmo has his own, seemingly autonomous character, and yet without Kevin Clash's arm inside of him, he is not Elmo. Everything that he is, is a part of Kevin Clash. It may be a unique part of Kevin Clash that does not exhibit itself in any other way, but ultimately everything that Elmo is an extension of who Kevin Clash is. 

And so we are in Christ. When we allow Christ to fill us, we do not disappear. We become our true selves BY allowing Christ to fill us. This, again, is well illustrated by C.S. Lewis. 

“…Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the Divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions…why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? And this difference, so far from impairing, floods with meaning the love of all blessed creatures for one another, the communion of the saints. If all experienced God in the same way and returned him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note… Heaven is a city, and a Body, because the blessed remain eternally different: a society, because each has something to tell all the others - fresh and ever fresh news of the 'My God' whom each finds in Him who, all praise as 'Our God'.” (151-2) 


In Romans chapter 8, the Apostle Paul puts it like this –

"Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what the nature desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of a sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace." (Rom. 8: 5,6 NIV)

In 1 Corinthians, he explains that we are like a body, but with different parts - there are different gifts, but the same Spirit. (1 Cor. 12:4, 12 NIV) So our true identity is in Christ, and idolatry is when we allow our identity to be defined by something else - when we serve another master. It’s not WHAT we do, but how and WHY we do it. "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." (1 Cor. 10:31 NIV). When we serve the world, the idols, the flesh, we fall, but when we serve Christ, the one true God, and make him our master, Paul says this; " To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand."


EPILOGUE

Before I close, I would be remiss if I didn't say anything about obedience or service. By reading this post, one might get the impression that all that we should do is find God in whatever we are already doing and then go on about our day. Yet God demands our obedience. In the Old Testament, our obedience is to a set of laws, and in the New Testament, Christ declares that all of the laws and all the prophets are summed up in two commands - Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. In this post I focused on the first one, and yet that is not to imply a disregard for the second. If we put Christ as our everything, seeing everything as a manifestation of him and as pointing back to him, then love for our neighbors will naturally fall into place. When we put our identity in something else, be it money or power or people or friendships or nature, we are putting our identity in something ephemeral, something passing. And I think we have this inherent knowledge of this coming loss. We feel our very souls slipping out of our grasps, tied to a sinking ship. Thus, we become bitter, angry, greedy, selfish, and hateful. We become like dying animals, lashing out at anything and everything, trying to hold on to whatever we have left. 

Conversely, when we are filled with Christ, the only true and eternal identity, we are freed from all that. We don't have to worry about loss or destruction or fading away. We don't have to gasp for air, fight for survival and keep it all for ourselves, and we are free to give and love freely. Christ fill is with himself and we pour it out to others, showing more and more of him until the day comes when we all can see him face to face. 

So as we go about our lives, may we remember that without Christ, we are nothing, like a puppet with no master, but with Christ we are free to be the we that we were created to be. As Tiny Tim said in "A Muppet Christmas Carol", "We reach for you, and we stand tall, and in our hearts and prayers we ask you, bless us all."