Quote of the Day
"What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give. A counterfeit god is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living. An idol has such a controlling position in your heart that you can spend most of your passion and energy, your emotional and financial resources, on it without a second thought. It can be family and children, or career and making money, or achievement and critical acclaim, or saving “face” and social standing. It can be a romantic relationship, peer approval, competence and skill, secure and comfortable circumstances, your beauty or your brains, a great political or social cause, your morality and virtue, or even success in the Christian ministry. When your meaning in life is to fix someone else’s life, we may call it “codependency” but it is really idolatry. An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, “If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.”
Tim Keller
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5 comments:
GREAT quote. Thanks for this!!!
Very convicting... Makes me think of all the little gods I chase after every day. If love is measured in passion, attention, excitement... Then I am an adulterous person. (James 4:4)
God have mercy.
God have mercy, indeed. I figure that we, the rich of this world, have many more idols than do the poor. The more money and assets you have, the more in this world you have to love. It's probably a major reason why it's easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye...
I don't think I agree about the financially poor having fewer idols in general. You can idolize what you don't have as easily as what you do have. This is the absurdity of dirt poor people buying $200 shoes when they get a chance. I get it that it makes them feel less poor and creates a less poor image if they possess a luxury item. It's also why a struggling middle-classer buys a Mercedes Benz. And idols aren't always things. They are anything that puts you at the center. They can be grudges, jealousy, bigotry, bitterness, anger, violent tendencies. The reason I don't go wandering around in ghettos is because social idolatry could get me killed. And there's this...if the poor have fewer idols we should all want to be poor. But Jesus tells us to serve and care for the poor, presumably to make them less poor. Why would he want us to make them less holy? I do believe that when we are generous with the poor and especially when we actually enter into personal relationships with the poor we find Jesus in them and draw closer to Him. But they are just people, and just as sinful as the un-poor.
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