Counterfeit Gods Quotes

“It is impossible to understand a culture without discerning its idols.

The Jewish philosophers Halbertal and Margalit make it clear that idolatry is not simply a form of ritual worship, but a whole sensibility and pattern of life based on finite values and making created things into godlike absolutes.

In the Bible, therefore, turning from idols always includes a rejection of the culture that the idols produce.

God tells Israel that they must not only reject the other nations’ gods, but “you shall not follow their practices” (Exodus 23:24).

There is no way to challenge idols without doing cultural criticism, and there is no way to do cultural criticism without discerning and challenging idols.”
― Timothy Keller

“... that most basic question which God poses to each human heart:
“Has something or someone besides Jesus the Christ taken title to your heart’s functional trust, preoccupation, loyalty, service, fear and delight? Questions . . . bring some of people’s idol systems to the surface.

‘To “who or what do you look for life-sustaining stability, security and acceptance? . . . What do you really want and expect [out of life]?
What would [really] make you happy? What would make you an acceptable person? Where do you look for power and success?’

These questions or similar ones tease out whether we serve God or idols, whether we look for salvation from Christ or from false saviours.”
― David Powlison

“When we repent out of fear of consequences, we are not really sorry for the sin, but for ourselves. Fear-based repentance (“I’d better change or God will get me”) is really self-pity.

In fear-based repentance, we don’t learn to hate the sin for itself, and it doesn’t lose its attractive power. We learn only to refrain from it for our own sake.

But when we rejoice over God’s sacrificial, suffering love for us—seeing what it cost him to save us from sin—we learn to hate the sin for what it is. We see what the sin cost God.

What most assures us of God’s unconditional love (Jesus’s costly death) is what that most convicts us of the evil of sin.

Fear-based repentance makes us hate ourselves. Joy-based repentance makes us hate the sin.

Excerpt From
Counterfeit Gods”
― Timothy Keller