Recently, in Paul Tripp’s excellent new devotional Everyday Gospel: A Daily Devotional Connecting Scripture to All of Life, he wrote about idols. When we hear someone mention an idol, we might think of people bowing down before something made of wood, metal or stone. Tripp tells us that the sad truth is that many of us who would never bow before a religious idol have idolatry in our lives. He writes that an idol functions as a God-replacement in our hearts, and that sometimes good things become idols. Things in our lives that were once blessings rise in level of importance in our hearts until they control our thoughts, desires, choices, actions, and words. A desire for even a good thing will become a bad thing when it becomes a ruling thing.   Just as Eve saw the forbidden tree was “good for food,” a “delight to the eyes,” and “to be desired to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6), so we are allured by idols—good things that become ultimate things.
Do you have any idols in your life? Think of your spouse or children. Tripp writes that someone’s love can become a life-shaping idol. It’s not wrong to want to be loved of course, but this desire must not be allowed to capture the place in your heart that only God should have. Tripp tells us that anything in creation can function in your heart and life as a God-replacement.
Some years back, Tim Keller wrote a helpful book on this subject, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters. In that book, he writes that 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 deepest needs and hopes. Anything – your career, family, financial security, comfort, control, favorite sports team, hobby, etc. – can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the best things in life. Keller writes that when anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshiping.  An idol is something that we look to for things that only God can give, but of course an idol will always let us down. Keller writes that if we look to some created thing to give us the meaning, hope, and happiness that only God himself can give, it will eventually fail to deliver and break our hearts.
I would expect that not many, if any, of us think that we have idols in our lives. But Keller tells us that an idol is whatever we look at and say, in our 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.”
So, I will ask again, do you have any idols in your life?