Counterfeit Gods Intro

Description of America by Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s

"A strange melancholy  that haunts the inhabitants... in the midst of abundance." Americans believed prosperity can quench their yearning for happiness, but such a hope was illusory: "The incomplete joys of this world will never satisfy the human heart".

Strange melancholy manifests in different ways, but most typically, it leads to despair.

Difference between sorrow and despair:

Sorrow comes from loss of one good thing among many

Despair comes from loss of the ultimate, it is inconsolable

What is Idolatry?

Contemporary usage

What we understand to be the meaning

Modern idolatry

"We may not physically kneel before the statue of Aphrodite, but many young women today are driven into depression and eating disorders by an obsessive concern over their body image"

Idols of the Heart, what does the Bible say idolatry is?

Colossians 3:5 “5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

Ezekiel 14:3 “3 “Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their hearts, and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Should I indeed let myself be consulted by them?”

Anything Can Be an Idol

"The bad news is we are so fixated on the problem of greed, which we tend to see in 'those rich people over there,' that we don't realize the most fundamental truth. Anything can be an idol, and everything has been an idol"

THESIS: "We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case. The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepestn eeds and hopes. Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life."

DEFINITION: "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."

"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" ... there are many words that describe this kind of relationship, but perhaps the best one is worship.

"The idols of traditional societies include family, hard work, duty, and moral virtue, while those of Western cultures are individual freedom, self-discovery, personal affluence, and fulfillment."

"All these good things can and do take on disproportionate size and power within a society"

"What many people call 'psychological problems' are simple issues of idolatry. Perfectionism, workaholism, chronic indecisiveness, the need to control the lives of others - all of these stem from making good things into idols that then drive us into the ground as we try to appease them. Idols dominate our lives."

"The way forward, out of despair, is to discern the idols of our hearts and our culture. But that will not be enough. The only way to free ourselves from the destructive influence of counterfeit gods is to turn back to the true one. The living God."

Questions

Idols capture our imagination, and we can locate them by looking at our daydreams. What do you daydream about? What do you enjoy imagining?

Idols give us a sense of being in control, and we can locate them by looking at our nightmares. What do you fear the most?

We can also locate idols by looking at our most unyielding emotions. What makes you uncontrollably angry, anxious, or despondent?