HannahandJesus

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Idolatry of the Heart: What is Idolatry of the Heart? & Why Secular Culture is Dangerous for It

This blog post about idolatry of the heart is motivated by own personal experience of idolatry of the heart that the Holy Spirit revealed to me.

As someone who is prone to vanity due to insecurity, and, as a Christian who has invited the Holy Spirit into my life, I have learned that I was, unknowingly, serving and worshipping skincare as an idol in my life and that it was something severely disrupting God from having His rightful place in my life.

As a result of this revelation, I felt compelled to articulate that which is idolatry of the heart, but I found this to be quite challenging.

After going around in circles and feeling frustrated, I sought out an additional source to help me articulate and explain what I had just personally learned through the work of the Holy Spirit. I have cited this source (in addition to the referenced books within it) for you at the end of this post so that you may consult them if you wish to learn more about idolatry of the heart.

I hope this blog post inspires you to invite the Holy Spirit to show you the idolatry of your heart so that you may repent, atone, and submit to Him fully.

Suggested Biblical reading to understand idolatry of heart: The Book of Ezekiel and The Book of Romans

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What is Idolatry?

Before we get into idolatry of the heart, I think it is first important to understand what idolatry in a more objective, impersonal sense is. For this reason, it is here discussed first.

Idolatry is mentioned many times throughout the Bible, and every time that I have read of idolatry being mentioned in the Bible, it is mentioned as something that is contrary to the Will of God. In fact, idolatry is given to Moses in the ten commandments as something not to do.

So, what is idolatry?

Put succinctly, idolatry is the practice or action of worshipping and serving something that is created instead of worshipping and serving the creator (i.e., God) as if it were God. Put in other words, idolatry is the act of treating something that is not God as if it were God and expecting to gain or receive from it that which only God can give us.

When you come to understand idolatry of the heart, you will see why God responds to it with such justified wrath. For when we practice idolatry, we are working to replace God and thus to turn ourselves away from Him.

How can we receive that away from which we are turned?

What is an Idol?

There is only One True God.

Obviously, if idolatry is the practice or action of serving and worshipping something that is not God as if it were God, then the thing that is being served and worshipped is not God and is thus something else.

The Bible refers to this “something-else” thing as an “idol.”

In the Old Testament, an obvious example of an idol is the golden calf that the people of Israel make and worship while they are in the wilderness. The calf itself is an idol, and the worship and serving of the calf is the practice of idolatry.

While any statue or figurine that one worships and serves is an idol, idols also take less obvious forms, and this is especially true in contemporary or modern society.

An idol is, as Tim Keller puts it, “… anything more fundamental than God to your happiness, meaning in life, or identity than God.” Additionally, he says of idols, “what thing, if you lost it, could almost mean that you lose the will to live? What thing, if you lost it, could mean that all significance and value would be drained out of your life? Whatever that thing is is an idol.”

Put another way, what thing is giving you more significance, security, and faith in life than the One True God Himself?

For me, it happened to be skincare. For you, it may be any number of things. An idol may be anything. It is how the thing functions in your life that makes it into an idol.

While the things functioning as idols are not bad things in themselves, Tim Keller even says himself, when they are looked to in order to get what only God can give, they are functioning as idols in your life and are thus disrupting the rightful place of God in your life. When this occurs, they are thus disrupting your relationship with God by essentially replacing Him.

What is Idolatry of the Heart?

Idolatry of the heart is the subjective, intrapersonal experience of the practice of idolatry. While idolatry is, objectively, the practice of worshiping and serving an idol (i.e., something created) as if it were God (i.e., the creator), idolatry of the heart considers the internal or subjective account of the practice of idolatry.

Put another way, idolatry of the heart is the human side of idolatry and may help to show the intrapersonal reasons that we turn to something other than God in an attempt to fill our deepest needs.

Now, original sin is obviously the most fundamental reason for all sin. It is true that humans are prone to sin and are prone to pride. However, it is also true that the human heart is prone to long for fulfillment and for meaning. We are made to have a relationship with God and to be led by Him. Thus, we have a deep, essential need to be loved, to have significance, and for our life to have meaning.

The problem is that we oftentimes choose to meet this need from an idol rather than from God, which is not only sinful, it is also stupid. Nothing outside of God can fulfill us or meet our needs. God created us. We require Him for all meaning, for all significance, and for all identity. Without Him, we are mere dust.

All idolatry is ultimately rooted, as Tim Keller says, “… [in] the desire to keep control of life by saying, ‘if I have this, then I am worth it.’” The only problem with this practice is that the things that we are turning to are inadequate to meet the longing of our heart, and, as Tim Keller says, “an idol will always break your heart, because no created thing can bare the freight of your deepest hopes or the weight of the longings of your soul.”

Only God can love you. Only God can heal you. Only God can give your life meaning. He created it.

When we allow our hearts to turn to idols instead of to God, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

These are examples that Tim Keller puts forth in the video cited below:

I) If you worship your intellect (i.e, if you desire to be seen as smart and are attempting to gather your sense of worth from others seeing you as smart), you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, and always on the urge of being found out

II) If you worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need even more power over others just to numb yourself to your own fear

III) If you worship your body, your beauty, and your sexual allure, then you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start to show, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.

Why is Secular Culture Dangerous for Idolatry of the Heart?

Increasingly, modern and/or contemporary culture is being secularized. In the past, people turned to other gods. Today, people turn to their smartphones. In the past, even if people worshipped other gods, they at least lived in a time when is was normal to recognize the supernatural as imposing on or superseding the natural. Today, people look no further than to the creation. They think if they know the creation, then they have all the knowledge that they need.

While it is true that many contemporary people are turning to witchcraft, to new agism, and to other pagan worship practices, it is increasingly more common for people to simply only regard the material world and the forces regulating it as having validity and influence over their life.

This is problematic and dangerous. The best and most efficient way to deter people from knowing God is to completely erase their conceptual ability to recognize Him and to make even the concept of there being something bigger than the material or natural world invisible or incomprehensible to them. Thus, the only area that they think that are able to turn to is that which is right in front of them.

While God is certainly more than a concept, we must have a conceptual apparatus that allows us to recognize Him if we are to know Him, and for many, their so-called intellect is getting in the way of them knowing God.

Extra Resources

As mentioned above, while my understanding of idolatry of the heart was made clear to me through revelation, articulating this revelation in a blog post was quite challenging for me. One source outside of the Bible that helped me to write this blog post is this video of Tim Keller. In this video he refers to his own book, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters, in addition to The Confessions of Saint Augustine of Hippo. If you are interested in learning more about idolatry of the heart, I recommend that you check out the video and consider the two books mentioned in addition to reading your Bible.

The suggested Biblical readings mentioned at the beginning of this post, in addition to other selections from the New and Old Testament, are what allowed me to clearly see the idolatry of the heart I was practicing in my life and that gave me the peace to let them go.

The Bible is the living Word of God. Having the Holy Spirit personally work within my heart is the only reason I was able to be set free from my idolatry.

He will do the same for you if you let Him.

“For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith”

Romans 12:3

With (tough) Love,

Hannah