Counterfeit Gods

Intro to Counterfeit Gods

I picked up Tim Keller's book, Counterfeit Gods on my way to San Francisco at the Minneapolis airport.  I had read half of it by the time I landed.  

As someone who has had many idols - and some of those were ridiculously "good" ones - this book really spoke to my heart.  

I have idolized my mother, my children, my home, my business, my clients, my colleagues and even my husband (when we were still married).  I put ridiculously high expectations on all of them as if that could somehow make me whole or satisfy me.  As I said, some of these things were very good.  No one would argue that loving your children is a good thing, for example but worshiping them and putting all of one's hopes and dreams on them - that's too much.  

One of the things I have prayed for consistently over the last few years is eyes that see.  I want eyes that see myself real and I want eyes that see others as they are - not as they wish they were or pretend to be.  Our Lord has answered my prayers - and broken my heart by giving me what I've asked for.

Because as He has given me eyes that see, I see my own sin.  I see the false Gods I have worshiped and the inevitable hurt that created.  

For many years, I attended a bible church.  During the early years, Pastor Dan Krahenbuhl did the children's section of the service.  Many times, I got more out of his mini-sermon than I did out of the senior pastor's work.  In fact, I can't tell you in any great detail any of the sermons I heard from the senior pastor but I can recall several of Danny's.  

I'm going to share one with you now.  One Sunday, Dan pulled out a dollar bill.  He had everyone look at it and then went on to ask the question - "How does the IRS train people to recognize a counterfeit dollar bill?"  No one seemed to know.  The answer is "They teach them everything there is to know about the REAL thing so it's easy to spot a fake."  I have been deceived far too many times by things that appear to be the real thing only to be disillusioned later because they were not.  Only God can give us what we need and the wisdom to discern the difference between good and evil.   

Counterfeit Gods are meant to deceive us.  As Keller points out, there is no hope on the empty promise of money, sex, success or power yet most people in our culture strive for those things as if they matter most.  The enemy doesn't even have to work that hard to capture our attention because the truth is, we want it.  

A minister named David Clarkson preached one of the most comprehensive and searching sermons on counterfeit Gods ever written.  He wrote it in the seventeenth century.  He said, "Though few will own it, nothing is more common."  If we think of our soul as a house, he said, "idols are set up in every room, every faculty."  We prefer our own wisdom to God's wisdom, our own desires to God's will, and our own reputation to God's honor.  Some people, he went on to say, will make even their enemies their God .... when they are more troubled, disquieted, and perplexed at apprehensions of danger to their liberty, estates, and lives from men" than they are concerned about God's displeasure.  The human heart is indeed a factory of mass-produced idols.

Keller finishes the book by saying that we must understand that idols cannot be removed, they must be replaced.  As I grow in my desire to know Him better, I know this is true.

I bought a chronological NKJV of the Bible on Saturday and honestly couldn't wait to start reading it. A decade ago, I was perusing through a Pottery Barn catalog on a Saturday night not excited to read God's word in a new and different way.  So much has changed and yet I know myself well enough to know that I have to keep watch and guard my soul because counterfeit Gods feel so very real in the beginning.  

The only answer is to cling to the only one who can give us what our heart desires.  When we know everything there is to know about our Abba Father, the one true God, it is, as Pastor Dan said, very easy to spot a counterfeit.