Are you looking for a mentor?  If you’re a young medical student, resident or fellow and looking for a mentor, please get in touch with us.  And, mentors, we need you too!

Mentors (and mentees) are needed in life — someone who is a little further down the road than we are or has skills we would like to develop in our life, or someone who has the values or character we would like to emulate.  Likewise, we all have something to offer.  God has taught us much in our journey.    

If you have a mentor or mentee, here is an assignment you can do together.  We think you will get a lot out of it… 

Watch the first 27 minutes of this COUNTERFEIT GODS ? VIDEO Sermon by TIM KELLER — “Idols of the Heart” — by clicking on the book cover.  Then take a few minutes to answer a few questions….use the discussion questions the next time you and your mentor or mentee connect.

What thing, if you lost it – could almost mean that you would lose the will to live — What thing if you lost it, meant all significance and value would be drained out of your life — Whatever that thing is, the Bible calls it an idol. The Israelites battled idols over and over and over — the story of the Jewish people is largely one of following God then abandoning God as they chased after idols. Do we presume to think that our lives are any different?  Is it any accident that the Old Testament repeatedly shows us the reality of idols in our hearts?

An idol is anything more fundamental to you or to your life than God — to your sense of self, for your sense of self value. Idols are things you?re looking to to get fulfillment and meaning and a sense of life purpose from: power, comfort, financial security, your kids – your wife, career, achievement, maybe a political cause and on and on.

?An idol will always break your heart. No created thing can bear the ‘freight’ of your deepest hopes or the weight or your deepest longings. Idols will always break your heart.?

If you?re a phenomenal athlete, or you?re an incredibly successful businessman, or you?re a world class cataract surgeon — if this very important, very fundamental piece of your identity was gone, how would you go on?

We may say to ourselves that if we were the best this or that, if we had the most toys, if we finally broke through, if we were finally rich, or extremely successful or highly esteemed and loved, we would be happy?we would be fulfilled?we may say this to ourselves but it?s a lie.

Pastor Keller says ?Anything you worship, outside of God, will eat you alive”?If you worship money and things – if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough — you will never be satisfied?this pursuit of things will never fulfill you because you can never have enough.

After you watch the first 25 minutes of Tim?s video, here are a few questions for discussion with you and your mentor.

What are some of the most prominent idols you see in our culture?

What are the idols you struggle with as it pertains to your career as an ophthalmologist?

How do you recognize the symptoms of idolatry in your life? You might do this by asking yourself, ?What or where do I spend my money and time — or to go much deeper?What is my worst nightmare — What thing if I lost it, what thing if it were absent from my life, would almost take away my very desire to live??

For some of us, career, kids, spouse, money and success are a large part of our sense of identity – our sense of acceptability, or our sense of worth – it?s not just money or prestige – in a very real sense it?s like a sense of salvation. Isn?t this an idol?

We say that God is most important to us, but honestly what is FUNCTIONALLY most important to us? For some, our parent?s approval, or spouse’s approval, or societal approval is functionally more important to us than our relationship with the Lord.

The Glen Brindley Mentoring Program is run by the Christian Ophthalmology Society (cosw.org).