What Is An Idol?

Let's think about idolatry.

Tim Keller, in his book Counterfeit Gods, provides a succinct definition of an idol. He writes:

"[An idol] is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give…

An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your 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.'

There are many ways to describe that kind of relationship to something, but perhaps the best one is worship…

The Bible uses three basic metaphors to describe how people relate to the idols of their hearts. They love idols, trust idols, and obey idols."

In his book, he provides a very useful and practical taxonomy of idolatry. He says there are two main kinds of idols:

The idols of our hearts
The idols of our cultures

And then he says that these idols function on two levels:

Surface idols
Deep idols

He explains that a deep idol is something like, "power, approval, comfort, or control." And a surface idol "are things such as money, our spouse, or children, through which our deep idols seek fulfillment."

It is easy to rotate through our surface idols without ever displacing the deeper idols of the heart.

This is important to understand because if your deep idol is something like approval, you might appear to be making progress in your Christian life by giving up your love for money to spend more time with your family. A lot of people would celebrate you taking a different job to be a good father. And working yourself to death while avoiding your family isn't good. But if in both cases, your heart is governed by a need to have the approval of others, then nothing has changed deep within you.

Keller also provides some clues identifying our idols:

"Your imagination is often in the service of your heart - it is picturing what you want most of all."

So our daydreams, our nightmares, and our strongest emotions - these are ways of seeing our ultimate concerns.

Sometimes, our idols gain power by captivating us with their apparent loveliness.

Other times, they gain power by remaining out of sight, yet still capturing our hearts.

Either way, when we can name our idols, we can begin to compare them to our First Love.