We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded by your direct support for ReKnew and our vision. Please consider supporting this project.
What Is an Idol?
We all believe lies about God that have caused us to mistrust him and therefore to look elsewhere for life. This is what an idol is. It’s anything we try to use to fill what only God can fill.
God never intended anyone or anything other than Jesus Christ to meet our core need for unsurpassable worth and absolute security. So when we try to meet these most central needs with something-or-someone other than God, that something-or-someone becomes an idol.
Idols always fail. They leave us with profound experiences of disappointment, frustration, hopelessness, and a host of other painful emotions. We try a wide variety of tactics to numb these painful emotions (alcohol, drugs, pornography, food, etc), or we distract ourselves from them (work, television, movies, sports, politics, etc). But distractions are only momentary and the Novocain of the idols eventually wears off.
A common idol we face today is related to “the American Dream.” Many ‘get life’ from what they achieve, what they possess, or whom they impress, which leads them to work eighty hours per week, sacrificing family and friends in the process of climbing arbitrary ladders.
Others chase peak experiences, believing that the next risk-taking adventure, the next experience of falling in love, the next lurid sexual experience, or the next drug-induced high will make them feel fully alive.
Christians tend to have a distinct set of religious idols. By this I don’t mean golden calves, statues, or shrines. Instead, some religious people have tried to find their ultimate worth and security in special rituals. Others have adopted righteous behaviors as a way to try and feel loved by God. And still others make an idol out of their tribe, making it superior to others because of their distinctive beliefs.
These are all forms of idolatry. God has established our worth, has accepted us into his family, and has secured us in his great love. Yet many fail to dwell in that love, fail to experience that security, and struggle to believe the worth they genuinely have. So with great hustle, and futility, they try to establish all of these things on their own.
—Adapted from Benefit of the Doubt, pages 63-65
Related Reading
Do You Have Enough Faith?
What does it actually mean to have faith? This is a topic I address at length in Benefit of the Doubt, but this post provides a very basic answer to this question. To appropriately understand the New Testament’s teaching on faith, we need to understand faith within the context of our marriage-like covenant with God…
What Does ‘Your Faith Has Healed You’ Mean? (podcast)
Greg discusses faith, doubt, and healings. Episode 486 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0486.mp3
The Only Starting Point
Sree V. Remella via Compfight Our friend Roger Olson wrote a great article on placing Jesus first when constructing a statement of faith. It might seem like a small thing, but it deeply matters what we place as primary in matters of faith. Let’s always begin with Jesus. From Roger’s blog post: What are we…
Why Bart Ehrman Doesn’t Have to Ruin Your Christmas (Or Your Faith) Part 3
This is the third of several videos Greg put together to refute Bart Ehrman’s claims published in the article What Do We Really Know About Jesus? If you missed the first two installments you can find them here and here.
This Week’s Sermon: Sledge Hammer Faith
Greg is feverishly working on a new book on faith and doubt and he decided to preach on this topic for a couple of weeks. He’s also been dealing with this topic on the blog as a part of fleshing out the ReKnew Manifesto. This week he asks the question: Is certainty-seeking, doubt-shunning faith idolatrous? Many…
When Jesus Questioned the Father
Though the sinless Son of God had perfect faith, we find him asking God the Father to alter the plan to redeem the world through his sacrifice—if it is “possible” (Matt. 26:42). As the nightmare of experiencing the sin and God-forsakenness of the world was encroaching upon him, Jesus was obviously, and understandably struggling. So,…