How many books that any of us have read can we say have really and truly changed our lives in fundamental ways? A new book that I think will “rock your world” is Counterfeit Gods, just published by Timothy Keller, a wonderfully gifted and insightful Presbyterian minister from Manhattan (New York: Dutton Book, 2009). I say I believe the book will change your life because it landed like a tornado in my own soul when I read the book last Friday. (Yes, that is how good the book is. I bought it Friday morning at Barnes & Noble and finished it by 9:00 o’clock Friday evening.)
Dr. Keller’s premise is that idolatry is the fundamental sin of the human heart, the sin that underlies all other sin. He makes a strong biblical case for that conclusion, not least of all from Romans 1:18-23. And after all, does it not make sense that idolatry must be the greatest temptation for our souls, given that the First Commandment condemns it (Exodus 20:3), and the “Great Commandment” of Deuteronomy 6:5 calls us instead to love the true God with all we are and all we have?
Dr. Keller surveys the biblical teaching carefully and defines idolatry as “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” (p. xvii). Through the scriptural accounts of Abraham, Leah, Zacchaeus, Naaman, Nebuchadnezzar, and Jonah, Dr. Keller shows how God reveals and deals decisively with idols like our deepest desires, our quest for human love and acceptance, money, success, power, and hidden gods. It is not that all of these desires of our hearts, like the quest for love or acceptance, are wrong in and of themselves. In fact, many of them are good impulses God himself wired into our hearts. The acute danger to our souls arises when we make idols out of these desires, that is, when we raise these desires in our hearts to a place of significance above the quest to know and delight in and be satisfied supremely in God.
In the final two chapters of the book, Dr. Keller shows how God’s defeat of the life-sapping idols of our hearts lies in total surrender to the Lord and in spiritual disciplines like prayer and Bible intake. The “bottom line” is that “Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol. That is what will replace your counterfeit gods,” Dr. Keller concludes (p. 172).
There is so much more I could say about this important and life-changing book Counterfeit Gods. For now allow me to encourage you in the strongest terms to secure a copy just as quickly as you can and read it slowly, taking in the very great biblical wisdom God has graciously imparted to the mind and heart of Timothy Keller. In the end, read this book for nothing less than the sake of the welfare of your soul in your love to God!
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