Elizabeth Scalia - Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life

Elizabeth Scalia masterfully presents insights in regard to the first, and yet most frequently unobserved, of all the commandments: You shall have no other gods other than the one, true God. This book provides an important message for the culture and is a must-read for all who seek the Lord in spirit and in truth.

Rev. Robert Barron

Founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries

Provocative, insightful, bold, inspiring, and faith-filled, Elizabeth Scalias musings as The Anchoress never fail to gain wide readership among Catholics of every stripe. She is committed to her faith, to her church, and to God. She uses her considerable talents to share these commitments, and her joy in being Catholic, with othersonline and now in print.

James Martin, S.J.

Author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything

Strange Gods will leave you shocked by just how many things youve turned into idols, and inspired to turn back to the only one who is really worthy of our worship. Thank you to Elizabeth Scalia for a much-needed wake-up call.

Jennifer Fulwiler

Blogger at Conversion Diary

Creation is supposed to be sacramental: a window into and a rumor of the glory of God. But precisely because its so beautiful, we can make the mistake of worshipping and serving created things instead of the Creator. We are like children who want the box and throw away the present on Christmas morning. Elizabeth Scalia shows us how to find the love and peace weve always really wanted by turning away from idols to the living God made fully manifest in Jesus Christ.

Mark P. Shea

Author of The Heart of Catholic Prayer

In her important and courageous new book, Strange Gods , Elizabeth Scalia presents us with a truth we avoid at our own peril: four thousand years after Yahweh declared, You shall have no other gods before me, our own idol-making far outstrips that of the ancient world. A fascinating perspective on one of the most urgent spiritual problems of our era.

Paula Huston

Author of Simplifying the Soul

Elizabeth Scalia is a true post-modern anchoress, writing with honesty what she has learned of Gods mystery from within her digital cell. Strange Gods is a meditation on a perennial truth: all of us face the temptation of confusing God with our selves. Like her medieval ancestors in faith, this anchoress sees through the distractions that ensnare us, and invites us to refocus our desire on what is most lastinga rich, broad, deep understanding of love, and an equally rich, broad, and deep probing into the mystery of God.

Tim Muldoon

Coauthor of Into the Deep

Elizabeth Scalia showed me just how many unrecognized little idols I have that shove God further out of reach. It isnt because he has moved away, as she points out, but because I cant have a meaningful conversation if Im only willing to talk to myself in the mirror about how wonderful I am. If for no other reason, you need this book to contemplate her focus on the Beatitudes, which was a wake-up call on how to apply that central piece of Scripture to my own life. This book is a keeper so I can reread it when I need to remember how the cross shatters the snares that bind me.

Julie Davis

Author of Happy Catholic

We need to be challenged by one of our own, someone who knows by experience that we are opinionated, noisy, cluttered, and busy in our homes and offices. Someone who knows our offices are often in our homes and, who relates to how easily distracted we are by chimes, buzzers, beeps, chirps, ringtones, pings, and other alerts that mean someone is trying to reach us. We need someone who knows how quickly we respond to those distractions with riveted attention, and how uncomfortable we are with silence. Elizabeth Scalia is that someone. She offers an alert that someone is indeed trying to reach us, but in the still small voice we dont hear while hitting the refresh tab and checking social media inboxes, eager for the next message. Elizabeth Scalia knowsand characteristically nails it with irresistible appeal because she says it colorfully and wellwhat we know and what we havent yet figured out. We need pithy messages. This is pithy: God still runs the ultimate social network and the commandments still ruleand the first two contain them all. The key is Love, which is inexpressibly beyond Like. And it constitutes the only comfort zone we can know in the human network, and the only connection well ever need to the eternal.

Sheila Liaugminas

Host of A Closer Look and Network News Director

Relevant Radio

Today, there are many Caesars who demand your allegiance: technology, money, sex, and power. So how can we resist? Elizabeth Scalia shows the way in Strange Gods : a clear, intelligent guide for those radicals who want to subvert these false lords and instead bow to the one true God.

Brandon Vogt

Author of The Church and New Media

In this worthy meditation, super-blogger Elizabeth Scalia posits that the strangest false god of all is the god we make of ourselves. She shows us the ways we become enslaved and ensnared. She guides us to more fully surrender in prayer. She reflects on the difficult but essential task of detaching with love.

Heather King

Author of Shirt of Flame

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible , revised edition, 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

___________________________________

2013 by Elizabeth Scalia

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews, without written permission from Ave Maria Press, Inc., P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556, 1-800-282-1865.

Founded in 1865, Ave Maria Press is a ministry of the United States Province of Holy Cross.

www.avemariapress.com

Paperback: ISBN-10 1-59471-342-1, ISBN-13 978-1-59471-342-2

E-book: ISBN-10 1-59471-357-X, ISBN-13 978-1-59471-357-6

Cover window iStockphoto.

Cover and text design by John R. Carson.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Scalia, Elizabeth.

Strange gods : unmasking the idols in everyday life / Elizabeth Scalia.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-59471-342-2 (pbk.) -- ISBN 1-59471-342-1 (pbk.)

1. Idolatry. I. Title.

BV4627.I34S23 2013

241--dc23

2012045730

* * *

To Pat
The pedestal with my name on it.

* * *

Contents

Chapter Nine: Through the Looking Glass:
Super Idols and Language

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my editor, Patrick McGowan, who suffered through the process of my writing this while I was constantly distracted with an overcrowded schedule and what I have discovered to be a very short attention span. I would have dedicated the book to you, but my husbands sufferings were much, much greater than yours, if you can imagine it. So he deserves the dedication.

Thanks to Father Robert Barron, Mark Shea, Brandon Vogt, Heather King, James Martin, S.J., Jennifer Fulwiler, Paula Huston, Julie Davis, Tim Muldoon, and Sheila Liaugminas (what impressive company for a peasant like me). All of you were generous enough, trusting enough, and daring enough to recommend this book while having only an incomplete product to read. I hope and pray I have not embarrassed any of you and that none of you will be reduced to saying, Well, I dont always agree with her, but sometimes her snout finds an acorn.