Last week’s sermon looked at one of the major obstacles to enjoying God; idols. Augustine called them ‘disordered loves’. They are ‘good things’ (God’s blessings) we turn into ‘ultimate things’.
The solution to idolatry is NOT to cut idols out of our lives altogether – unless they are a form of sin. Since most idols are ‘good things’ (family, job, money, sex), God actually WANTS us to be enjoying them. Instead, we put our loves back in the right order. For example, if we love our job over our family, the solution is not (necessarily) to quit; it is to reorder our loves so that family comes before job.
This is hard for three reasons; the first being in identifying idols. The line between enjoying God’s good gifts (which we’re SUPPOSED to do) and worshipping God’s good gift (idolatry), is often very fine. This takes great insight and diligence.
The second reason is that our idols are meeting a God given need; to be affirmed and told we’re worth it. Sometimes an idol is so entrenched as the source of that affirmation that we need a counsellor or psychologist to help us start digging it out.
The third reason is that replacing our idol with a ‘new affection’ is the hardest work of all. In the closing paragraphs of his book ‘Counterfeit Gods’, Tim Keller quotes John Newton as saying; ‘it seems easier to deny myself in a thousand instances of outward conduct’ (i.e. work hard at fighting idols) than ‘to keep my eye simply on Christ’. Keller closes with; ‘[he] who knows the difference Newton refers to – the difference between obeying outward rules of conduct rather than setting your heart on Christ – is on the road to freedom from counterfeit gods’.
Brendan McLaughlin
