The Sugary Sweetness of Idolatry

Idolatry Playlist: Build Me Up Buttercup

Is it weird I have a playlist called “Idolatry”? Strange or not, I’d like to share some songs off that playlist as a way of exploring what the Bible calls idolatry.

As philosopher/theologian James KA Smith points out idolatry is less about false beliefs as it is about misplaced desire. We aren’t drawn into the control of an idol through by some compelling intellectual argument. Rather, idols work at the level of our wants — and what we want is something that often escapes our purview. We don’t always know what we want even when what we want is what animates our lives.

And so this series will explore this relationship between idolatry and desire.

The first song off the playlist is Build Me Up Buttercup.

If sugar had a melody, I think this would be it. The song was brought back into our collective consciousness a couple years back when Geico ran a series of commercials featuring the song:

Build Me Up Buttercup is the perfect sweetener to make something so bland as car insurance somewhat palatable.

While the tune embodies the feel-good quality of sugar, the lyrics remind us of the crash that comes after the high.

Why do you build me up (Build me up)
Buttercup, baby
Just to let me down? (Let me down)
And mess me around

If idolatry is like an addiction (the natural consequence of our misplaced desires), then sugar would be the gateway drug. We get drawn in by our immediate senses. The taste and the high keep us coming back for more even when we know the letdown is coming (not to mention the pounds!).

And then worst of all (worst of all) you never call, baby
When you say you will (say you will) but I love you still
When you say you will (say you will) but I love you still
I need you (I need you) more than anyone, darlin’
So build me up (build me up) buttercup, don’t break my heart

That last line is telling.

While the chorus begins with the question, “Why do you build me up?” in some ways naming a plea for things to change. By the end of the chorus it becomes, “Build me up buttercup.” It is not an interrogation anymore. Now it is almost an appeal for the very thing that was at first questioned.

This is how idolatry works.

The name we give to this process of building up and letting down in our day and age is consumerism. While we may not literally bow down to golden calves anymore, idols have simply morphed into any thing and every thing.

It’s that feeling of anticipation when Amazon promises delivery at 10, but then there is a delay and it won’t come until the next day.

“I’ll be over at ten,” you told me time and again
But you’re late, I wait around and then
I went to the door, I can’t take anymore
It’s not you, you let me down again

This is all part of the building up.

And we may think that the letting down is a glitch in the system. It is not. It is a feature.

Idols have this remarkable ability to promise happiness through possessing it only to have it end up possessing us.

You were my toy but I could be the boy you adore
If you’d just let me know

The genius of idolatry, if we can call it that, is that our being possessed by the idol comes through the very means of our being let down. This is how the Bible describes it. When an idol doesn’t come through, the idolators double down on their devotion, believing that increased devotion will lead to the eventual fulfillment of whatever hope has been placed in the idol.

The way this plays out in our consumeristic economy is rather than double down on any one idol, we simply move on to the next one. There is always another thing; another product that attracts us, that builds us up. We feel that tinge of excitement, of anticipation. So we order it. And then we get it. We possess it. And there is some satisfaction, some amusement. But then inevitably we are letdown. So we move on to the next product. There is always the next product; the next thing that builds us up with anticipation. And the cycle repeats….on and on and on.

What this does is trap us in a kind of static state. We move up and then we move down. And we are tricked into thinking this repetitive movement, the constant building up and letting down, indicates some kind of development or progression. But really we are stuck in the same place.

This place is what Jesus calls living on bread alone.

Bread, like sugar, like many of the products that fill our closets, is not evil. It is good, but only to a certain degree. What we need to recognize is that there are deeper desires at work within us. Transcendent desires. Desires which we might name as our longing for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful — what Scripture calls “every word that comes from the mouth of God”.

What idolatry does to us is promise the Good and the True and the Beautiful in the form of bread alone. It keeps our focus on things that cannot and were never meant to satisfy those deeper longings. So instead of looking towards a nutritious meal full of proteins and greens idolatry says eat some more gummy bears.

This is the danger of consumerism. It ruins our appetite for the things that can feed the more substantial and weighty desires in us.

In the end, idols build us up, let us down and ultimately break our hearts.

Like sugar, Build Me Up Buttercup eases us into the dynamics of idolatry. As we continue on in the playlist we’ll see how things can get darker and more sinister.