Excerpt from Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller
The Importance of Discerning Idols
It is impossible to understand your heart of your culture if you do not discern the counterfeit gods that influence them. In Romans 1:21-25 Saint Paul shows that idolatry is not only one sin among many, but what is fundamentally wrong with the human heart:
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave their thanks to him… They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator. –Romans 1:21-25
Paul goes on to make a long list of sins that create misery and evil in the world, but they all find their roots in this soil, the inexorable human drive for “god-making.” In other words, idolatry is always the reason we ever do anything wrong. No one grasped this better than Martin Luther. In his Large Catechism (1529) and in his Treatise on Good Works he wrote that the Ten Commandments begin with a commandment against idolatry. Why does this come first? Because, he argued, the fundamental motivation behind lawbreaking is idolatry. We never break the other commandments without breaking the first one. Why do we fail to love or keep promises or live unselfishly? Of course, the general answer is “because we are weak and sinful,” but the specific answer in any actual circumstance is that there is something you feel you must have to be happy, something that is more important to your heart than God himself. We would not lie unless we first had made something – human approval, reputation, power over others, financial advantage – more important and valuable to our hearts than the grace and favor of God. The secret to change is to identify and dismantle the counterfeit gods of your heart.
It is impossible to understand a culture without discerning its idols. The Jewish philosophers Halbertal and Margalit make it clear that idolatry is not simply a form of ritual worship, but a whole sensibility and pattern of life based on finite values and making created things into godlike absolutes. In the Bible, therefore, turning from idols always includes a rejection of the culture that the idols produce. God tells Israel that they must not only reject the other nations’ gods but “you shall not follow their practices” (exodus 23:23). There is no way to challenge idols without doing cultural criticism, and there is no way to do cultural criticism without discerning and challenging idols. A good example of this is the preaching of Saint Paul in Athens (Acts 17) and Ephesus (Acts 19:26), which led to such an alteration in the spending patterns of the new converts that it changed the local economy. That in turn touched off a riot led by local merchants. Contemporary observers have often noted that modern Christians are just as materialistic as everyone else in our culture. Could this be because our preaching of the gospel does not, like Saint Paul’s, include the exposure of our culture’s counterfeit gods?
The Importance of Discerning Idols
It is impossible to understand your heart of your culture if you do not discern the counterfeit gods that influence them. In Romans 1:21-25 Saint Paul shows that idolatry is not only one sin among many, but what is fundamentally wrong with the human heart:
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave their thanks to him… They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator. –Romans 1:21-25
Paul goes on to make a long list of sins that create misery and evil in the world, but they all find their roots in this soil, the inexorable human drive for “god-making.” In other words, idolatry is always the reason we ever do anything wrong. No one grasped this better than Martin Luther. In his Large Catechism (1529) and in his Treatise on Good Works he wrote that the Ten Commandments begin with a commandment against idolatry. Why does this come first? Because, he argued, the fundamental motivation behind lawbreaking is idolatry. We never break the other commandments without breaking the first one. Why do we fail to love or keep promises or live unselfishly? Of course, the general answer is “because we are weak and sinful,” but the specific answer in any actual circumstance is that there is something you feel you must have to be happy, something that is more important to your heart than God himself. We would not lie unless we first had made something – human approval, reputation, power over others, financial advantage – more important and valuable to our hearts than the grace and favor of God. The secret to change is to identify and dismantle the counterfeit gods of your heart.
It is impossible to understand a culture without discerning its idols. The Jewish philosophers Halbertal and Margalit make it clear that idolatry is not simply a form of ritual worship, but a whole sensibility and pattern of life based on finite values and making created things into godlike absolutes. In the Bible, therefore, turning from idols always includes a rejection of the culture that the idols produce. God tells Israel that they must not only reject the other nations’ gods but “you shall not follow their practices” (exodus 23:23). There is no way to challenge idols without doing cultural criticism, and there is no way to do cultural criticism without discerning and challenging idols. A good example of this is the preaching of Saint Paul in Athens (Acts 17) and Ephesus (Acts 19:26), which led to such an alteration in the spending patterns of the new converts that it changed the local economy. That in turn touched off a riot led by local merchants. Contemporary observers have often noted that modern Christians are just as materialistic as everyone else in our culture. Could this be because our preaching of the gospel does not, like Saint Paul’s, include the exposure of our culture’s counterfeit gods?
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