mckaycaston.com

I began reading Keller's Counterfeit Gods over the weekend. In a word, profound. Another word, convicting. And still another couple words, gloriously hopeful. The book is about idolatry. In the first chapter, Keller defines idolatry by alluding to comments on American culture penned by Alexis de Tocqueville, who in the 1830s said that there "is a strange melancholy that haunts the inhabitants... in the midst of abundance" because "the incomplete joys of this world will never satisfy [the human] heart."

Keller asks, "What is the cause of this 'strange melancholy' that permeates our society...? De Tocqueville says it comes from taking some 'incomplete joy of this world' and building your entire life on it. That is the definition of idolatry."  Usually, idolatry takes place when I take a good thing (an incomplete joy) and make it an ultimate thing (like planting a church, or winning a game, or making an income, or whatever). It is that thing that, if I lost it or failed at it, would cast me into despair.

Of course, the gospel offers us that which can truly satisfy, which is to know the God of grace who pours out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given to us. The Spirit who enables me to cry out "Abba, Father," and to be convinced that I am fully forgiven and completely accepted sons. Reconciliation without fear. That is what my heart longs for, and that is what we receive through faith in the promises that are bound to the cross of Jesus. Embracing the ultimate thing as the best thing.

It is the power of the gospel that breaks the power of idolatry and brings genuine peace, joy, hope and soul satisfaction. It enables me to possess something and lose it, to pursue something and fail at it, and to remain sane—even sanctified, possibly sorrowful, but not despairing—in the process.