Finding and Replacing Your Idols -- Tim Keller

This post is adapted from Tim Keller's book Counterfeit Gods. If you get the chance, I highly recommend you reading this short and helpful book. It is probably more eternally helpful than I will ever know.

Identifying Idols

1.) Look at our imagination.

Archbishop William Temple once said, "Your religion is what you do with your solitude." In other words, the true god of your heart is what your thoughts effortlessly go to when there is nothing else demanding your attention. What do you enjoy daydreaming about? What occupies your mind when you have nothing else to think about? Do you develop potential scenarios about career advancement? Or material goods such as a dream home? Or a relationship with a particular person? One or two daydreams are no indication of idolatry. Ask rather, what do you habitually think about to get joy and comfort in the privacy of your heart.

2.) Look at how your spend your money.

Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there is your heart also" (Matthew 6:21). Your money flows most effortlessly toward your heart's greatest love. In fact, the mark of an idol is that you spend too much money on it, and you must try to exercise self-control constantly. As Paul has written, if God and his grace is the thing in the world you love most, you will give your money away to ministry, charity, and the poor in astonishing amounts (2 Corinthians 8:7-9). Most of us, however, tend to overspend on clothing, or on our children, or on status symbols such as homes and cars. Our patterns of spending reveal our idols.

3.) Look at how you respond to unanswered prayers and frustrated hopes.

You may regularly go to church. You may have a full, devout set of doctrinal beliefs. you may be trying very hard to believe and obey God. However, what is your real daily functional salvation? What are you really living for, what is your real -- not your professed -- god? A good way to discern this is how your respond when life doesn't go your way. When you respond with sadness and disappointment, but then you go on and life isn't over then those things weren't idols. But when you pray and work for something and you don't get it and your respond with explosive anger or deep despair, then you may have found your real god. 

4.) Look at your most uncontrollable emotions.

Look for your idols at the bottom of your most painful emotions, especially those that never seem to lift and that drive you to do things you know are wrong. If you are angry, ask, "Is there something here too important to me, something I must have at all costs?" Do the same thing with strong fear or despair and guilt. Ask yourself, "Am I so scared, because something in my life is being threatened that I think is a necessity when it is not? Am I so down on myself because I have lost or failed at something that I think is a necessity when it is not?" If you are overworking, driving yourself into the ground with frantic activity, ask yourself, "Do I feel that I must have this thing to be fulfilled and significant?" 

Replacing Idols

Idolatry is not just a failure to obey God, it is a setting of the whole heart on something besides God. This cannot be remedied only by repenting, or using willpower to try to live differently. Turning from idols is not less than those 2 things, but it is also far more. Paul says we must "set the mind and heart on things above" where "your life is hid with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:1-3). This means appreciating, rejoicing, and resting in what Jesus has done for you. Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol. That is what will replace your counterfeit gods. If you uproot the idol and fail to "plant" the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back. 

Rejoicing in Christ is crucial because idols are almost always good things. If we have have made idols out of work and family, we do not want to stop loving our work and family. Rather, we want to love Christ so much more that we are not enslaved by these things. "Rejoicing" in the Bible is much deeper than simply being happy about something. Paul directed that we should "rejoice in the Lord always" (Phil. 4:4), but this cannot mean "always feel happy," since no one can command someone to always have a particular emotion. To rejoice is to treasure a thing, to assess its value to you, to reflect on its beauty and importance until your heart rests in it and tastes the sweetness of it. "Rejoicing" is a way of praising God until the heart is sweetened and rested, and until it relaxes its grip on anything else it thinks that it needs.