Counterfeit Gods - Tim Keller

Thank You Steven thank you just that by the way in some ways all I'm going to do tonight is try to show you the dynamics that can account for a change life like the one you heard or change family like the one you've heard about how does that happen why does that happen that's what I'd like to talk to you about now when the subject of the coherence of Christianity comes up is Christianity coherent is a cogent does it make sense I think more narrowly we go immediately to talking about God does he exist who is what does he like or we go to talk about to Jesus and his claims or maybe is the Bible true can we trust it and those are all very important subjects but I often feel that what gets overlooked in the beginning that if you're a person who is looking at Christianity and you're trying to make sense of it one of the subjects that's overlooked is what the Bible says what what the Christian faith says about the human heart about human nature and especially about that word sin now why I want to look at that with you tonight is for a couple of reasons one is some one wag some years ago put it this way of all the Christian doctrines only the doctrine of sin is the one the doctrine of sin is the one Christian doctrine the only Christian doctrine that for which there's empirical absolute proof it's the one thing we can say I can prove it to you however another way to put it is this an awful lot about what the Christian faith teaches about salvation and about Jesus doesn't make sense unless you understand what the Bible teaches about the human heart I have often realized now as over the years I live in New York it's a very place Phil is very skeptical people just like Cambridge a lot of other places and I often find that unless I explain what the Bible says about the human heart very often everything else I'm trying to tell people doesn't make much sense so let's go there and let's go there through a theme and let me enter is the theme with a question what thing if you lost it could almost mean they would lose the will to live what thing if you lost it could mean that almost all significance and value would be drained out of your life whatever that thing is and I'm here tonight to show you that you've got at least something like that in your life whatever that thing is the Bible calls it an idol a counterfeit God and an alternate pseudo salvation a an idol and Isle is anything more fundamental than God to your happiness meaning in life or identity an idol is something more important to God more fundamental for your sense of self-worth for your sense of significance and value for your sense of security an idol is anything you love more than God or rest your heart in more than God therefore idols are not bad things they're good things which you're looking to to give you what only God can give you they're created things that you're looking to to give what only a creator if he exists could give you so an idol can be career family children spouse achievement some political cause your own physical attractiveness romance human approval power comfort financial security almost anything and all those are good things san agustin was the most brilliant and perhaps the first christian thinker past the bible to expound on this subject especially in his book the confessions and there he defines sin in a way we probably don't think of when you and I think of sin we think of violations of the law behavior and of course that's true because it murder and robbery in lying all the things that are there in the Ten Commandments those behaviors are sin but if you want to go deeper to ask what about the human heart produces those kinds of behaviors san agustin says the essence of sin is disordered love and what he means is loves out of order loving something which you ought to be loving 4th 2nd or 1st something that you ought to love but you shouldn't love it supremely so for example just one example of disordered love's an easy one is should you love your career sure should it you should you have a passion to do well in your career and be successful yes should you love your family should you love the relationships in your family yes but if you love your career more than your family if it's out of order if you put your career ahead of your family so you're always away from your family or so your family is always getting second place you know what's going to happen and when I live in Manhattan and in Manhattan we're very secular people and we think of we don't think we're very religious and when we ever hear about primitive practice child sacrifice in ancient times or maybe places in the world today we're just horrified how awful the gods would be you'd sacrifice these gods by sacrificing your own children and yet in Manhattan there's an awful lot of jobs that require if you're going to be successful in them that you perform child sacrifice that you so neglect your family and son neglect your children that by the time they get a little bit older they are so angry they're so embittered they're so messed up that ironically because you loved your career ahead of your family you'll find that the family explosions that happen will hurt your career and therefore what this means is if you love things third that ought to be second or things you know first that ought to be third there's breakdown in your life idolatry is an idol always will break your heart because no created thing can bear the freight of your deepest hopes or the weight of your soul's longings idols will always break your heart so let me give some examples Ernest Becker a brilliant writer who won the Pulitzer Prize years ago in with a book the denial of death Ernest Becker was a an agnostic or an atheist he said I didn't believe in God very much a secular person but he also recognized the problem of not believing in God because through his book denial of death he's constantly talking about the fact that if you don't have a God there's a tendency for you to take something else in your life and turn it into a God and he gives this example he says we see how modern people have put themselves in an impossible position modern secular people still need to feel like their lives matter in the grand scheme of things they still need to feel that there's some higher meaning and that they have experienced some kind of great love but if there's no longer any God how are we supposed to do this one of the first ways that occurred to modern people the to the modern person was what's been called the romantic solution the self-glorification that we need in our innermost being now in many cases we look to get from our loved partner the lover becomes the way to fulfill one's very life the Worth and meaning now that you want comes from the loved one the romantic option may be ingenious and it may be creative but it is a lie that must fail what is it we want when we elevate the love partner to the position of God we want redemption nothing less we want to be rid of our faults we want to be rid of our feeling of nothingness that's why we fall in love we want to be justified we want to know there that our existence is not in vain we turn to the love partner for validation we expect them to make us good to make this real through love needless to say human beings cannot do now that's just romance and I think we all resonate with that if not you certainly know people who are doing that that's idolatry let me give you another example this is a much briefer thing but it gets at it I read an article some years ago in the New York Times about what happens to really good athletes when they have a career engine career-ending injury now we're not just talking about professional athletes very often you also have a very gifted amateur athletes what happens when a along comes a an injury and that's the end of the career and the the doctors who treat athletes say they not only need physical care for their injury they almost always need therapy it's a it says here well let me just read it it says usually depression sets in and it's not physiological why one doctor says it's simple the injury sends them into an existential crisis who am i anyway they ask it's devastating because very often the loss of their athleticism has totally wiped out their reason for being but it was also happens when athletes retire why why is it that some athletes make the jump and some athletes never ever get over it a lot at the end of their career what's the difference between just honoring a good thing and turning a good thing into an ultimate thing what's the difference all the difference in the world all the differences to whether you're able you're going to be able to live your life functionally here's another example how about artists and celebrity Cynthia hi Moe writes for the Village Voice and she's a kind of snarky writer she's a funny writer and if you lived in downtown Manhattan and if you live there for many many years almost everybody even I actually not that I live in downtown Manhattan but if you live in Manhattan for a long enough time you meet people when they're aspiring to be celebrities or aspiring to be actors or actresses and get into the theater or movies and you know you know one out of a very small number actually make it and therefore almost all of us who have been around knows somebody who have made it they've they got the Hollywood you know and we remember when when they were just waiters and waitresses at a local bar something like that and Cynthia hi will do quite a few but she also noticed something happened to them and she actually in the this article she lists several names that you would know but I'm not going to tell you who they are because I think it's a little unfair well no no I won't I can never mind someone's going to ask me the question now but anyway here's what she says listen here is funny and amazing I pity celebrities she said no I do celebrities were once perfectly Pleasant human beings but now their wrath is awful you see they wanted fame they worked they pushed and the morning after each one of them became famous they all wanted to take an overdose because that giant thing they were striving for that thing that was going to make everything okay that was going to make their lives bearable that was going to provide them with personal fulfillment and haha happiness it actually happened and the day after they woke up and they were still them the disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable and then she adds and it always takes my breath away she says I think when God wants to play a really rotten practical joke on you he grants you your deepest wish and then giggles merrily when you realize you want to kill yourself now I would say as a teacher of the Bible that the motivation there on God's part is not that's not fair God does not give you your deepest wish and then giggle merrily but what she's saying is at almost at the very heart of Romans chapter one which says the very worst thing that God could ever do to anybody who is saying oh I don't want to live for God I'm going to live for my career I don't want to live for God I want to for my spouse I want to live for God I want to live for my children or this or that I want to live for professional success the worst thing I could possibly do is to actually give it to you because whatever that is especially if you become successful at it you will find that it doesn't give you what you thought it would you'll wake up the next morning and you'll want to take an overdose and you realize wait a minute wait a minute see those of us who are not successful that's most of us haven't really achieved success we we can kind of live in the illusion that if we only broke through then we'd finally feel good about ourselves then we then we really finally have that that emptiness inside would finally be filled but there is a small number of people who've really hit the top way to the top and they do want to kill themselves in many cases or there certainly gets cynical or nihilistic or jaded or bitter do they not why because the next morning they wake up and they find they're still them perhaps the most sad and poignant of my examples tonight and this is I I always shudder a little bit when I read it is David Foster Wallace who was a great writer it was a novelist an American novelist at least I don't have any idea frankly how well-known he was across the world but in America he was one of the leading lights of the postmodern novelists and writers and he was highly respected and loved and a couple years ago he committed suicide in his late 40s not too long before he committed suicide he gave a commencement address at a liberal arts college and this commencement address as soon as it was given was noted by many people as being unusual because David Foster Wallace like a lot of postmodern writers is impenetrable he's a very heart in it when you read his work you have no idea what it means and you're supposed to sit and discuss it and think about it and that's it that's the point many folks have had many folks pointed out that this this commencement speech was very very lucid unusually lucid and direct and accessible but it was not long before he killed himself and listen to this he says in the commencement address in the day-to-day trenches of adult life there is actually no such thing as atheism there is no such thing as not worshipping everybody worships the only choice we get is what to worship and the compelling reason for maybe choosing a spiritual God like Jesus Christ or Allah or Yahweh or the wicked mother goddess this is the compelling reason for choosing that kind of God is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive and then it gives examples if you worship money and things if they are where you tap real meaning in life then you will never have enough and you will never feel you have enough if you worship your body and beauty and sexual lore and you do that then you will always feel ugly and when time and age start showing you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you if you worship power you will end up feeling weak and afraid and you will need ever more and more power over others just to numb you to your own fear if you worship your intellect if that's what you live for for being seen as smart you will end up feeling stupid a fraud always on the verge of being found out but the insidious thing about all these forms of worship is that their unconscious they are default settings now I do not know enough about David Foster Wallace to speculate exactly on the relationship between what he said here to his suicide though everybody says there's some kind of link I think we could be confident to say there was something that ate him alive one of the things in this list or maybe something he didn't list ate him alive and he says unless you have a God who can deliver on the hopes that you put in these things it's going to eat you alive now if this is the case and if he's right by the way I on websites especially atheist websites I've seen so many atheists extremely put out by this commencement address because even though David Foster Wallace was essentially a secular person he had no particular religious beliefs I've seen many atheists say how upset they are that he would say that there are no such thing as atheists that everybody worships that everybody builds a life on something I've seen a Thea's very upset he says worship means coming and sitting down in a building and at a religious institution and observing religious services it's ridiculous to call anything that you live for worship and that shows exactly what he says and that is the problem with the insidious thing about all these forms of worship is their unconscious and if you don't see them yet you're very very young the older you get the harder it is to hide from yourself that you have really bound your heart up with something a kind of God and you are betting your life on it and you are investing so much in it and only as you get older and older do you begin to realize what Cynthia hi moe says and that is even if I get it I think I'm going to wake up and realize is this all there is now if this is true and we all have these idols and they can really eat us alive if we don't recognize them before it's too late then what do you do well first of all you have to try to recognize what they are how do we know what they are now let me give you a couple of ideas how do you spot the symptoms of idolatry in your life Alfred Adler a very you know a leading psychologist sort of post Freud said that it's very hard to find out what you're really living for by just asking yourself that question so if I ask you what are you really living for your answers will be oh I'm living for my family or I'm living for this political cause or maybe you'll say I'm living for God you know I'm a religious person living for God Adler says the way to find out what you're really living for is not to ask that question because you really don't know your own heart very well instead he says look at your nightmares what is your worst nightmare what thing I know I started like this but I want to go deeper what thing if it were absent would almost take away your desire to live so for example let's say you're engaged to somebody and this person you love gives you a tremendous amount of meaning in life and of course he or she will but then let's say something happens and you break up and it was a great relationship and what are you going to feel you're going to feel tremendous grief because it was a good thing it was a good thing and you're going to end if you lose it it's you're going to feel terrible for a long time but if you've turned that person into not just a good thing but an ultimate thing if that person and what they provide to you is the reason almost that you get up in the morning if that person's love is the main reason you feel like you're really any good you don't admit that to anybody else but in your heart that's how you feel if you turn a good thing into an ultimate thing and you lose that it will devastate you it will destroy you doesn't necessarily have to make you suicidal but it often does let me give you two quick examples of this there was a there's a in the beginning I'm not trying to plug the book but in the beginning of the counterfeit God's book which I wrote pretty recently I have a list here just many places on the web you can find his list a list of high-profile high-profile suicides of leaders of major financial institutions that occurred generally in 2008 when the first part of the great economic meltdown world economic crisis happened many many people who knew that they were they had lost so much money killed themselves many on the other hand I had an experience I got it tried it very hard to you know hide this person's identity here as I tell you I had an experience with a woman not long ago who has over the last few years given a good number of very large gifts to Christian organizations because she's made a lot of money in the financial world I went by to see her and her she was in tears she said this is I've had the worst day in my career today Just My Luck to show up as a pastor on the day it was the worst day of her career you know gosh no I'm going to have to be pastoral what do I do but I didn't have to worry and she said I'm almost sure that at least the kind of issues at the last five or six years I've made a lot of money and I'm in a field that's almost has almost been devastated and I can tell you right now that almost certainly I'm never going to make anything like the kind of money I've been making how I make ten percent of what I used to make a year I might make five percent of what I used to make a year as I my career's largely over doesn't mean I won't be able to support myself but she says I'm gonna have to change everything the way in which I live where I live my home everything and then she says but I'm kind of excited because she says in the past you know I love my church and she's in the past I had a lot more money than time so I had to give you the money but now I'm gonna have a lot more time than money so I'm going to be needed I'm going to need to be retrained what can I do for the church now I'm actually kind of excited in a way why didn't she kill herself like all of her friends were killing themselves because to them the people who were devastated I don't mean they all killed themselves but for the people who are devastated who felt like if I can't live these places if I can't belong to this club anymore if I can't live at this level anymore my life's over it's over for them the money wasn't just money the money was their image was their identity it was their it was what the Bible calls their righteousness their sense of acceptability their sense of significance it wasn't just money it was a kind of salvation and for her it was just money because Jesus was her salvation I talked in less much sadder she was able to make the jump in other words I talk a much sadder story some years ago I talked to a woman who was in and out of mental institutions and sometimes she came to church sometimes not and at one point her counselor talked to me and said you know you're her pastor so I'd like to just briefly on what her problems are and the counselor who was uh you know he was very polite to me as a pastor he wasn't a Christian believer at all but he says he says this is a woman who was a very very good musician and her parents raised her to be a great musician put a lot of pressure on her to be a great musician and even though she's really quite a good musician she's not the world-class famous you know number one number two number three kind of artist in her field that she all of her life worked to be and that her parents were sure she would be she's just a good musician and she can't handle it if she and he said she's you know she believes in God and she says she believes in God and she prays but frankly this is her God and it has failed her she believes she says oh I believe in salvation through Jesus and this is this guy said to me he says but this is her salvation and she has failed and her parents approval is more important functionally in her heart than God her effort to be a great musician is functionally more important than anything else she believes so what she believes about God has actually almost nothing to do with how her heart really works and even he realized that if she actually began to believe what she said she believed deep in the center of her heart she'd be free and I'm not sure I don't know where she is at this point and I've lost track of her for various reasons I hope she is now let me give you a little bit of a biblical orientation here where does the Bible talk about this Romans chapter 1 verses 18 to 25 is the classic New Testament it's the locust classic us on this subject and essentially Paul says there that that underneath everything else he says quote we worship and serve create things rather than the Creator we worship and serve created things rather than the Creator and what it does is it creates not just nightmares by the way so here's I'm trying to tell you the second way to look at the second set of symptoms to find your idols is not just look at your nightmares but look at your most uncontrollable emotions because Paul says when you worship something you serve it see he says they worship and served created things rather than the Creator so if you worship something if it's more important to you than God you are to some degree enslave to it it drives you you can't not have it you can't live without it and what that does is it creates uncontrollable emotions if you give you one example I got more than that but let me just give you one example some years ago I talked to two women not not the same year but close enough that I could compare them and both of them had husbands and they had one teenage son and in both cases their teenage sons were going off the rails they were beginning to they were having trouble in school they were having trouble with the law getting in trouble and they clearly were both sons were going bad because the fathers were being lousy fathers the fathers were cold they were remote they had no time for their sons and the wives could see that the husbands were ruining their son's lives in both cases the wives came to me as a pastor because they came to my church saying you've got to help me because I am so bitter I am so bitter and angry that our communication is breaking down between me and my husband and I'm not even sure our marriage is going to survive so what I did in both cases was I think what I supposed to do I said are you professing Christians yes and do you believe in forgiveness and the importance of forgiveness yes and that God's forgiving you yes so you must forgive others yes so we sat down we looked at texts we prayed together we talked about you know you have to forgive your husband let's pray for that that's pray to God for that to my surprise let's call her mother a who had actually probably the worst husband of the two and who actually hadn't been in the Christian church for a very long time forgave she broke through her anger dissipated it was difficult and then what she was able to do is start to move on and it actually helped the communication because when you're bitter toward somebody you really can't communicate you can't persuade them is to furious at them and their marriage got better and because the marriage got better the husband heard somewhat what he was saying and he improved somewhat enough for the son to improve somewhat and therefore basically we have a happy ending but mother B who had been in the church much longer and who from what I could tell actually probably had the better of the two husbands could never do it she could not forgive she couldn't let go she was furious she was angry she couldn't stand him and here's the great irony why was she unable to do it even though she tried why were her emotions uncontrollable why was her anger more than she could handle because even though I believe the first mother loved her son the second mother made her son into her meeting in life what she looked at her son and actually she spoke like this in her heart of hearts she said if my son is happy if my son grows up well-adjusted and loving me and having a happy life then I'll know I did something right because I haven't really done much of anything else right I haven't accomplished much of anything else but if I just am a good mother to him and he grows up then I'll feel like you know my life really had some kind of significance do you realize what she just did her mothering was her salvation her son was her Savior that his love in spite of the fact that she came to cry you know to Christian church and so Jesus is my Savior but her son was her Savior functionally really honestly the Bible says we all worship and serve something besides the Creator in our natural default mode and that means that ironically she couldn't forgive her husband she stayed angry at him the relationship broke down the communication broke down the marriage broke apart and the son got worse ironically by loving her son more than she loved God she destroyed him because your your Idol will always break your heart now uncontrollable emotions you see if if something is not just a good thing if money is not just money if my son's not just my son you know if my ministry is not just my ministry but it's like a kind of salvation a kind of justification I'm feeling like now I'm justified now now you know my life means something it's not all for loss if you look to anything like that it will eat you alive so finally we have to come to the place of asking what do we do about it and here's what we have to do about it and I hope now you see as I wrap up why this is this subject is important regardless of where you are spiritually regardless of where you are when it comes to faith for example if you say I'm not sure I believe in Christianity in fact I'm still having trouble figuring it out in New York City I found very often one of the reasons why people find Christianity not cogent is because the cross doesn't seem cogent doesn't Jesus dying on the cross to forgive us for our sins well that's an interesting thing my name is skeptical Fred say but why what why I don't feel that bad I'm sure there are murders murderers and robbers and and people have done terrible things and maybe they will say oh I'm terrible and I need God to save me through forgiveness but for the most of the rest of us were decent people we live pretty good lives you know I don't think I'm so bad that I need that but the problem the essence the essence of your trouble the essence of sin is not the bad things it's turning a good thing into an ultimate thing which by the way leads to bitterness which can lead to murder it can lead to harm it can lead to oppression see all the bad things all the behaviorally the behavioral bad things you know like lying and like viciousness and all those things it comes from idolatry and even if you're living a good life your idolatry will still destroy you all of our hearts good people and bad people once you understand the concept of idolatry all of our hearts are still riddled with sin riddled with self-centeredness riddled with self justification riddled with our desire essentially to keep control of our lives by saying if I have this then I am worth it then I am valuable and in a sense I don't really need God that's sin and once you understand idolatry I've had an awful lot of my skeptical friends in New York say if that's sin well yeah of course I'm sinful and very often they say I'm not sure I believe in God but I can see your prompt I can see the point in fact some people say yes I am driven I am anxious these things probably are too important to me and maybe maybe well you know I feel that when a person who doesn't believe hears idolatry hears about idolatry and actually sees it their own life there's a tendency for them to say I don't know if I believe in Christianity but it would be great if it was true and if you get to that place I think you not only know you understand idolatry but you actually start to started to understand your own heart and therefore idolatry shows us why the gospel is necessary why Jesus had to die on the cross for sins because we were all riddled with idolatry good people and bad people and we need God's forgiveness but it's not enough just just look at the objective accomplishment of Jesus on the cross he died for our sins he paid for our sins so now you're free from the guilt of your idolatry he's if you go to God and say God Father accept me because a lot of Jesus has done he will accept you because your idolatry sins have been forgiven but it's not enough just to look at the objective accomplishment of the Cross you have to subjectively bring into your life what God has done and what Jesus particularly has done on the cross it has to become when you see his love for you and his sacrifice for you and and doing it out of desire for you that has to become so beautiful it has to become so compelling that has to so melt you and move you that then you can take that subject of joy you have in what he's done for you and apply it to your idols because that's what turns money into just money what turns spouses into just spouses and sons and adjust sons and daughters into just daughters let me give you a couple of examples in the Bible there's a place where Jacob once she falls in love with Leah and he says to Leah pardon me he falls in love with Rachel excuse me there's another part of the story but I'm not going to go into that and he goes to Rachel's father Laban and says please I'd like to marry your daughter and of course in those days you had to pay a price to the family if you're going to marry your the daughter and Laban says you have to work for me for seven years seven years hard labor if you're going to get Rachel and that was an exorbitant bride price even then but the text tells us in Genesis 29 it tells us but Jacob for Jacob those seven years went by like that it felt like no trouble or no time at all because of his love for her he had this over mastering positive passion he loved Rachel so much that it enabled him not to care about the judge really work now Thomas Chalmers the great Scottish minister and theologian wrote a famous sermon called the explosive power of a new affection and Thomas Chalmer says nobody changes bad habits by just trying nobody changes bad habits just by saying I'm going to really try hard to change nobody ever comes being scared or overcomes racial prejudice or anything just by trying here's what he says overcomes your character flaws he says the heart is so constituted that the only way to dis possess it of an old affection is through the explosive power of a new one what you need to drive out your fears and your control emotions and all those things that are driving you and and even that emptiness that you're trying to fill with these false gods the one thing you need is an overmastering positive passion and what is that I love my wife I actually have a very good marriage and one of the things I learned from reading the letters of John Newton who also had a good marriage was that you're in a good marriage your spouse can become your biggest Idol I actually have that problem I struggle with all the time I respect my wife's opinion over everybody else and I want her affection more than anybody else's and even now after 35 years of preaching on my way home you know on after Sunday I want to know what she thinks of the sermon I don't really care what anybody else thinks and she's heard me and she's heard me and if she says was a good sermon probably a pretty good sermon and so often she doesn't think it's a good sermon and then I and she doesn't want to tell me because she knows about the idolatry problem so I say hey did you like the service today which really means what you think of my sermon and and she says oh yeah I said well the sermon how do you have any suggestions you know which is my way of trying to see have any suggestions which means please gush or something and if she ever says it was fine I'm crestfallen still 30 you know six years old 35 years I mean and she gets furious at me and she should she says don't you dare put this kind of pressure on me she says you know at this point it's what God thinks about you it's a it's what you stand before God not me so we are very sensitive to our various ideologies I'm not going to tell you about hers it's not fair I would confess my own sins but the fact of the matter is that both of us realize something someday one of us is going to look at the other one in a coffin one of us is going to be standing there and the other one's going to be in a coffin and if the person in the coffin is our savior if waiting see if you make any human being more important than God when that human being is lying in the coffin your God's not going to be able to help you when your heart is breaking what is going to get my heart to pull itself off of my wife so she's just a wife so I can really love her truly remember that woman her because her son was more than a son to her he didn't look she didn't love him right because their careers were more than careers they didn't execute them right and because my wife tends to be more than just a wife to me I'm in great danger what is going to pull my heart off of my wife so that I can just love her I've got to see the beauty of what Jesus Christ has done let me close with this illustration the years ago I talked to a woman and we lived in a trailer park right near my little Church in my little town in Hopewell Virginia and I was young minister and I was trying to help her she had really had a very hard life but she ended up teaching me more because I she knew more about life than I did and here's what your problem was she had lived a very hard life at this time she was in her 40s she'd been in and out of jail I think I know she had been in and out of drug addiction you just tell by looking at her she looked a lot older than her being in her early 40s oh she was she had been cursed by being born beautiful evidently she was a beautiful child she was a beautiful little girl and she was an absolutely beautiful young woman and because of that there were always men after her especially powerful men to whom having a Butte a woman like looking like that was a badge of power and because of that she had turned male affection into the idol of her life she literally felt she was nobody unless somebody loved her especially a man and as a result she did not put up decent boundaries she let men abuse her sometimes physically she was not selective about who she was with she just needed one at any given time and as a result she was the subject of violence she was in and out of prison she was in a drug addiction she was she had a terrible and then what happened at the very end was it all broke down and she became a Christian and as she became a Christian she began therapy and the therapist was very happy it was very helpful to her in some ways but here's she told me this she told me at one point the therapist came and said look your problem is you've based your self-image and your identity and your significance and security on male affection right she said and this has been terrible for you no boundaries abuse right you just can't love yourself unless you know that some man loves you right so here's what I want you to do so the therapist you've got to get a career you got to become a successful career woman we've got to help you end your I get the rest of your education and get a marketable skill and then you get a career and you're self-sufficient and you'll feel good about yourself because you will be a successful career woman and she said this is what she told me she said her therapist look with all due respect you've helped me so much but let me just ask you want me to take a typical female Idol which I built my life on which is destroyed my life and now you want me to adopt a typical male Idol so instead of getting all my self esteem from a man loving me now I'm going to get all my self esteem from being successful in making money she says what if I don't want either addiction can't you let me build my life on something that it doesn't you know can't let me down that isn't dependent on me performing and earning my salvation and the therapist is well I don't know but say she already did know she was still working it out and she came to Colossians chapter 3 there's a place there where it says your life now if you're a Christian is hid with Christ in God and when Christ who is our life appears we will appear with him in glory and that riveted her and she realized what that meant because Jesus died for her because Jesus loved her because Jesus poured herself himself out for her every other man had basically made her pour her self out for him for her yes for him in other words every other man came into into her life saying your life for mine and Jesus had come into her life and said my life for you I'm pouring my love out for you and as a result Jesus became as it were you know her Rachel her treasure her pearl of great price and she says now when I see a guy coming after me or even looking at me like this I say something in my heart and what I say to myself in my heart not out loud but in my heart I look at this guy and I say hey hi guy you know maybe maybe you're great maybe we'll get together and that would be nice maybe we'll get married that would be nice but I want you to know you will never be my life Christ is my life and because I won't make you into a Savior I might end up making you a really good wife do you understand how what the Bible says about idolatry how would the Bible says about sin makes sense of your life makes sense of your heart makes sense then of the cross and make sense of the world I hope you do and now we're going to get a chance to ask some questions so Steve is going to tell you how to do that thank you again very much to the jazz band I feel very mean making them stop playing thanks very much fellows we got I've lost count 30 40 questions so I'm sorry we can't possibly cover all of them thank you for texting Lots in here's a first Tim why doesn't everyone kill themselves like you suggest sorry that isn't quite required you weren't suggesting that people should kill themselves were you why do many non-christian people live well-adjusted and satisfying lives yes and I'm pretty sure that that was supposed to be a joke that I didn't suggest actually the Cynthia hi mo quote is a better example of what happens if you have made something an idol and you don't achieve it or don't even get close you can live an awful long time without the disillusionment that successful people experience you can say I know it'd be okay eventually it might be okay eventually so I've seen plenty of folks that actually haven't realized how empty their lives are or how or how actually or how weak the payoff is of their particular idolatry because they because they spend so many years still with the hope they're going to achieve what they're hoping to achieve but not actually having it I think that Cynthia hi moles right when she says that most folks who are extremely successful very often tend not so much to kill themselves even though she that's a bit of an exaggeration however she's what she's saying is people find that they get bitter cynical nihilistic very very jaded but I think the other thing to say is when you say why do so many non-christian people live well-adjusted and satisfying lives I would say that there is a there is a certain there are peopIe I hate to get into a whole other line of theological reasoning the Bible says that there is both special Grace and common grace common grace is the kind of wisdom and moderation and a good sense that God gives to all human beings because they're in His image and they have a certain sense of who God is special grace is the intervening Holy Spirit that comes in and does a radical restructuring of the heart and the fact is that there's a pretty good number of folks who've got quite a bit of common grace and especially those who don't actually reach the top in many cases but actually find themselves always traveling and never arriving and a combination of those things mean there's plenty of folks who don't who lead pretty well-adjusted lives but I guess maybe I just say one other thing I'm as I said I'd like to refer to my advanced age as time goes on not just many of the people who are my age you don't believe find it more and more difficult to lead those satisfying lives they begin to recognize the the nature of the things that we would call idols and they haven't recognized by now David Foster Wallace is right and saying that it's insidious they don't recognize it as worship but as time goes on you do so my guess is the people who live very well-adjusted lives tend to be younger tend to have a lot of common grace and tend to be traveling without arriving if they lead really well-adjusted lies without a full-on relationship with God Tim thank you another person has asked if as you say we need to look for our salvation in a non human creation how can I know the Christian God is the right way to go David Foster Wallace said it's better to worship a real God then he gave a list remember the wicked mother goddess Allah outweigh Jesus Christ so forth and maybe this is referring to that if so that's a great question how can I know then that the Christian God is the right way to go every other I'm going to say there's all due respect to the other religions and the wisdom in them and the the moral lives that they produce in their adherence but every other religion says that the way you connect to God the way you connect to the divine is through something you do it could be transformation of consciousness it could be certain ethical prescriptions you have to do this you have to do this certain observation certain observances every other religion essentially says to you if you do these things for noble truths the five pillars then you will connect to God the Christian gospel is not just different than that it's exactly the reverse the Christian gospel says there's nothing you do in a sense to earn your salvation there's nothing you do to merit it or to perform it or to achieve it it is a absolutely free gift now you remember the woman I talked to you about at the very end for the trailer cord remember how she put it she said I was trying to earn my salvation through male affection and I you know therapists are asking me to earn my salvation the more normal male way through success notice she was right in saying every way except the Christian gospel and every way except through Jesus Christ salvation is essentially something you earn in which case you transfer for you transfer your idolatry to your moral record you're no longer maybe making career in Idol you're no longer trusting in this or that as your salvation now your moral record becomes your salvation and that can be every bit as enslaving because you never feel like quite good enough you're never sure you really live a good enough life to keep in the blessing and to keep that divine connection so in the end the other religions don't give you a fundamental restructuring of the heart and the way in which the heart works which is self-justification and self-salvation the gospel comes in and completely challenges that and that's the reason why I would say the Christian God and Jesus Christ in particular is the real challenge to idolatry and is the real destruction of idolatry in your life and other forms of religion don't really do it Tim one day someone's written why do I need forgiveness from God for my idolatry and surely it's just my problem if my idol lets me down actually that's great these are great questions thank you very much you because I remember as I was speaking about that I said I don't I almost I almost went down that path and I didn't now I will remember of what I remember disordered loves that idea from San Agustin love's out of order what I like about the disordered loves idea is there is a hierarchy of loves I try to give you an example where to love your career more than your family now your family is not God and yet to love your career more than your family is disordered love because your your your loves are not in their proper place so at that level think about this if you if you really let's just say you were a a single parent maybe you are and you you really truly for your only child you really did give up your whole life you have worked like a dog to put the child through school you worked like a dog to give the child a mom you know I sort of at least a moderately normal life let's say you were pretty impoverished and you're you're in a lot of difficulty but you want your child to have and let's just say we're not doing this idolatrous Lea I know we I use that as an illustration so for a minute you're going to have to you know help me with my illustrate this illustration it's not an idolatrous one imagine you're a single parent you are in pretty bad straits and you really really sacrify a lot just to give your child a normal life put him into a decent school help him into a functional life and what happens if the child gets all that from you and you given all that and then out he goes or she goes and hardly calls you hardly talks to you Christmas cards birthday cards yes of course respect in a rather formal way you know to you because after all you are the parent but no love certainly no gratitude certainly it's it's disordered love it's it's not giving the mother or the father the parent the place that that person deserves now God has created you if he exists he's created you if the guy if God exists he not only created you but he keeps your molecules together from just running off in it you know the Bible says that he holds the gate he holds together the the world the universe with the word of his power he keeps you together he keeps you alive every second keeps your heart pumping so you owe God absolutely everything and then on top of that you not only owe him everything as a creator you owe everything to him if it's true what the Bible says that he came to earth is Jesus Christ and died on the cross to absorb the debt instead of making you pay for it he paid it himself what do you owe him you owe him a centrality that he deserves to be in the center of your life and therefore you're absolutely right and maybe I I'm glad you've corrected me or at least you've corrected the impression I may have given you and that is that idolatry messes your life up but it's also deeply Grievous to God you know you would weep over the fact that your child did not see what you did you would weep over that it would grieve you it would be a stab in the heart and idolatry stabs God in the heart if there is a God idolatry stabs from the heart so it not only grieves him and tramples upon him and wrong shame it also destroys you but frankly it wrongs him primarily and wrongs you secondarily and that's the proper way I think to see what is wrong with idolatry once a person accepts that they have an idol in their hearts what part of the Bible would you suggest would be most help for them to start with reading and why would you choose that my my mind that's actually I don't think anybody's actually ever asked me that question like where would you start I probably would do Galatians or Romans and I think the reason for that is the Galatian well first of all Romans has a section on idolatry it's not long but it bears a very careful study almost every verse tells you a little bit more about it Galatians doesn't talk too much about it directly but both of them talk about the difference between self salvation and Christ salvation and they both what I love about Galatians is if you it's all about the gospel it's all about you're saved by grace you not saved by works you don't save yourself God saves you through Christ so it's the gospel but you can see at the very beginning this is not a gospel this epistle is not presenting the gospel to non-christians it's presenting the gospel to Christians and it's Paul's way of saying you say you believe the gospel but you really don't or you don't understand the ramifications of it and therefore I would probably go to those two books first but I would I think now that I said that I need to tell you I don't believe there's one place in the scripture that nails idolatry and the others do not there's more about idolatry in the Old Testament probably than in the new so there are suggestions in the back the last chapter of the counterfeit God's book that would be a little better even and telling you where to go from here but I would start with Romans and Galatians since you asked where would you start in the Bible why now then we got time for last two questions and if what you say is true does God need to be true in order to have the beneficial effects that you're describing do you follow that in other words it couldn't God just be a sort of you know it's a sort of concept that still operates and still functions effectively oh yeah well I think I'm going to have to give a negative answer the question if what you say is true does God need to be true in order to oh no sorry you the way he said it it's a negative answer the way it's written up well it does it if what you say you're trying to help okay what I try to say at the end was that that the subjective no no yeah it is absolutely necessary for God to be more than a concept for it to have the beneficial effects I'm talking about I've seen plenty of people accept the basic idea of idolatry in fact I said that many my skeptical friends in New York men especially young people in New York who don't really understand Christianity I go to idolatry right away and here's the reason why if you say do you believe in sin they'll say I don't think so and they say what's sin if I say what's breaking the law and they will say well who's to say what moral absolutes are and we get in an argument about you know who's view of right and wrong is right or wrong but if I instead go to idolatry almost always I have my folks my friends say I see your point because everybody has to admit that you live for something and everybody has to admit you're getting your meaning out of something and I push them and say you realize that means that the thing that you are living for has this this kind of power over you it drives you it frightens you if it it creates inordinate guilt it creates an ordinate yes they see that they see it so I've had people who only have the idea of God as a as a concept and maybe he exists maybe doesn't understand idolatry but they can't do anything about their idols unless God becomes more than a concept but that the love of God becomes a reality to your heart a reality to your heart it has to be it has to be almost palpable you have to see what God has done through the cross it has to move you it has to make you weep frankly or it doesn't actually have the power to restructure your heart another way to put this is the one the woman in Virginia once said for a period of time I knew God loved me but what I really wanted was male affection and so she said I think she said this I think it's where I got this idea she said God was on audio but guys were on video so what he meant was God was saying I love you because I believed in his love it was very conceptual but male love was on video and I don't know if you've ever tried to listen to something on audio while you're watching something on video the video is more all-absorbing in the audio you can you can hardly even listen to it and the only way for for God and his love to go on video from audio is for you to have an encounter with him through faith and what he did through Jesus Christ on the cross when that becomes a reality that moves you because you see you need it and because you see that you deserve to be cast off but instead he's brought you in see what when then it becomes an existential reality and then the beneficial effects come so what I'm basically saying is no God needs to be much more than a concept in order to receive the beneficial effects I'm speaking of and this follows right on it might mean you may feel Eve answered it's not you already because it's it's asking the question what suggestions do you have from moving on from that intellectual understanding of sacrifice of Christ to an emotional one I don't want to say well do you have any suggestion for moving from an intellectual understanding of Christ to an emotional one I wouldn't want to say you move from an intellectual to an emotional not no offense to the to the person who wrote as I understand what you're saying Jonathan Edwards who was an American minister and philosopher believes that the heart when you read the Bible and you see what it says about the heart in English we tend to we tend to associate the heart with the emotions but you'll see often in the Bible people think with the heart and they feel with the heart and they even act with the heart and so Edward says is if you want to be biblical in your understanding of the human psychology you could say that the heart is like the command center the control center it's the it's where your fundamental commitments are and out of the heart comes your both your feelings and your thinking and your actions and so it's possible to have an emotional experience that doesn't change your life I know I've had them to get moved and so I'm going to change my life and then I don't change my life Edwards would say if you get emotional about something but it actually doesn't change the volition you know emotional engagement without volitional engagement means your heart hasn't actually been affected and therefore the heart by the way is not just the mind it's not just the emotions it's also the mind so over the years as a pastor taking what Edward said is my understanding is not that I want people to move from a more intellectual understanding of of the faith and what Jesus did on the cross to an emotional one i but I want I want their doctrine to begin to affect the heart and therefore the life and the way to do that as far as I know is still ultimately through prayer and prayer is not just talking talking about to God about please help me in these ways prayer is taking things you've read in your word in his word and instead of saying now I believe it asking yourself questions like this if I really believe this how would I be different what negative emotions wouldn't be there what behavior wouldn't be there if I really understood this how would this make me different another way to meditate on it is not just to look at the truth but to say how does this truth enable me to adore God how can I praise God for this instead of just saying yep I believe it how can I praise him for it what sins can I confess because of this how can I say Oh Lord I don't live this way so what's important is to take the truth and through adoration through meditation through confession take that truth and and take several minutes every day to try to drive it into your heart until you begin yes to feel something the danger with this is you're not after emotions you're after just honoring God you're after trying to make that this truth not just the cognitive its concept in your mind but a reality that affects your whole life so what you have to do is you you kind of work on your heart but you don't go after your emotions you work on it through meditation meditating it in you have to this deep a prayer life as you possibly can and you leave it up to God when it comes to feelings you leave it up to God as to how much you're going to feel on a particular day don't don't push on the emotions otherwise weirdly enough you can turn the feelings into a badge that God really loves me and you're back into works/righteousness except it's emotional works/righteousness so the answer is a prayer life it's I frankly I did not get to this part in the book I'd like to write another book on this but it does mean not just Bible study and then pray for mom and dad and this and that but taking the Word of God and meditating and adoring and confessing that down into your heart until it starts to catch fire and it may take a long time before it does catch fire but it will I think if you ask God you your cupboard faith Tim thank you very much I'm just gonna take a moment in a second world will express our appreciation to Tim for speaking tonight but from what he was just saying if you are somebody who thinks well I do want to take this further I'm not quite sure how wouldn't pretend that tonight or even if you were here last night and tonight that we've covered all the bases there's lots more for you to explore so I want to make some suggestions about how you might do that it may be someone invited you tonight may be a good person to talk to perhaps they can make some suggestions to you about how to think further if you would like to know of other options then I think you got one of these leaflets hopefully a few moments ago hope they were passed around and inside you'll find a number of courses that are being run over the next few weeks in and around Cambridge church is putting on five six evenings where you can think these things through with others open to any question lots of room for discussion a great way to discuss with others try and move forward in your thinking to commend those to you and we'd also love you to pick up if you'd like to a free book which is a copy of the Gospel of Luke one of the four accounts of the life of Christ that are found in the Bible and if you haven't read through the details of Christ's life but pick one up there by the exits as you go out also by the exits three of the books that Tim has written the the one that chimes in with tonight is counterfeit God's when the empty promises of love money and power lets you down Tim was just referring to that so that would be a follow on from the topic of this evening the prodigal God explores the parable of the prodigal son and looks at what the heart of the Christian faith is through that prodigal through that parable and then that the final book is the reason for God which explores some of the the communist objections and difficulties with the Christian faith and some of the clearest reasons for believing it all of those are six pounds and there's a bookstore here by that exit and one back out in the foyer on the way out thank you very much for coming to a nice and let me ask you to show your appreciation to Tim Carter for speaking to us to see you

Channel: IzzyInvasion

Views: 435,746

Rating: 4.7991376 out of 5

Keywords: Tim, Keller, Christian

Id: _mK65lpveSM

Length: 70min 22sec (4222 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 06 2012