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As I mentioned last week I am, along with some others, reading and eventually reviewing Pete Gall’s memior, “My Beautiful Idol.” It is absolutely amazing. Pete’s story is beautiful. Further, his story is our story. It is everyone’s story. I’ll save the rest for my review, which unfortunately may be a little later than I’d originally planned. But it’ coming!

Until then, here are some excerpts:

“There’s an inherent immorality in advertising that shows itself in phrases like “create a need.”…Likewise, there is something inherently immoral about using a gift for ability for the good of something you don’t believe in. It’s a prostitution….”

“I don’t know how the word is used in the Bible, but to my marketing mind and idol is a god you can put in your pocket. It’s something you can control, pull out when you need a does of insurance or magic, and then put away while things click along well. Oh, and an idol will always choose your death over its own. This is true of careers, relationships, doctrines, fears, hiding places, and even the choices we make to “believe in ourselves.” Even the idol of me will choose my death over its own. It happens with suicide, but it also happens in a million ways too. We die in favor of the idols of ourselves anytime we can’t admit the truth to ourselves. And we’re all addicts to that on, I’m afraid.”

“I think the church has become a toothless lion. And the teeth have been pulled out by church people who don’t really believe what they say they believe. They don’t serve the people they say they’ve been called to serve; they don’t trust the truths that say they trust; they don’t love the people they say they love; they don’t keep the promises they say they’ll keep; and they don’t point to the sort of God they say they point to. People from within the church have made errors in judgment…and those errors have diminished the church’s credibility; and the more credibility has been diminished, the more people within the church have capitulated with society’s efforts to relegate the church to some quaint, outmoded superstition; and the more that has happened, the more the church has been left with little to show for itself but the arcane bromides of its small, dark existence.”