a good post. I'll need to think about this awhile. It's difficult for me to try to be objective because I have so many issues of my own on this which cloud my judgement. I would certainly agree with you where you say:
These days, in Christian circles an idol is anything to which you give a large portion of your time or distracts you from spending time with God, but honestly I think this is going too far. though I don't think that's a new problem: it's a good old Catholic one as well.
Perhaps in the end it's too much a personal issue to make general statements about?
For example, one person can drink a few glasses of wine of an evening and thoroughly enjoy it and be none the worse for it. For his mate, on the other hand, it might lead to weeks on the booze.
On that point I am thinking about my previous career as a music teacher. I used to divide my better pupils into two groups: the ones who enjoyed music and got really good at it by dint of hard work and 'disciplined application' and the ones who really needed it just like they needed oxygen or water . . . . It always seemed to me that the guys who had less stable backgrounds were more likely to need their music in an emotionally stabilizing way . . . in my life I have met (and loved) boys who never stood a chance: emotionally so damaged right from the start,their lives on the edge of society have borne this out ever since . . . . they never even got to the point where they could find their 'music' . . .
That sounds off-topic I know but it relates to what you said about 'where the heart is'. Knowing 'where the heart is' sounds so obvious and something everybody should be able to do as easily as falling off a log. For those who know love and are given love and live in loving families it might be - at least often enough to keep sight of the essentials in life. For others (and I realise as I write that I must include myself here) it has just never worked out like that. Love is something we think we have and can give but find that it wasn't what we thought it was and that we didn't respond in the ways we expected and it can be downhill all the way from there. I suppose that's where the idolatry thing can kick in in a big way . . .