quote:

The Opportunity of Disenchantment
Tim Keller - Pastor, Author

"There are more idols in the world than there are realities."
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

A Strange Melancholy
After the global economic crisis began in mid-2008, there followed a tragic string of suicides of formerly wealthy and well-connected individuals. The acting chief financial officer of Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, hanged himself in his basement. The chief executive of Sheldon Good, a leading U.S. real estate auction firm, shot himself in the head behind the wheel of his red Jaguar. A French money manager who invested the wealth of many of Europe's royal and leading families, and who had lost $1.4 billion of his clients' money in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, slit his wrists and died in his Madison Avenue office. A Danish senior executive with HSBC Bank hanged himself in the wardrobe of his £500-a-night suite in Knightsbridge, London. When a Bear Stearns executive learned that he would not be hired by JPMorgan Chase, which had bought his collapsed firm, he took a drug overdose and leapt from the twenty-ninth floor of his office building. A friend said, "This Bear Stearns thing…broke his spirit." It was grimly reminiscent of the suicides in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash.


In the 1830s, when Alexis de Tocqueville recorded his famous observations on America, he noted a "strange melancholy that haunts the inhabitants…in the midst of abundance." Americans believed that prosperity could quench their yearning for happiness, but such a hope was illusory, because, de Tocqueville added, "the incomplete joys of this world will never satisfy [the human] heart." This strange melancholy manifests itself in many ways, but always leads to the same despair of not finding what is sought.

There is a difference between sorrow and despair. Sorrow is pain for which there are sources of consolation. Sorrow comes from losing one good thing among others, so that, if you experience a career reversal, you can find comfort in your family to get you through it. Despair, however, is inconsolable, because it comes from losing an ultimate thing. When you lose the ultimate source of your meaning or hope, there are no alternative sources to turn to. It breaks your spirit.

What is the cause of this "strange melancholy" that permeates our society even during boom times of frenetic activity, and which turns to outright despair when prosperity diminishes? De Tocqueville says it comes from taking some "incomplete joy of this world" and building your entire life on it. That is the definition of idolatry.

A Culture Filled with Idols
To contemporary people the word idolatry conjures up pictures of primitive people bowing down before statues. The biblical book of Acts in the New Testament contains vivid descriptions of the cultures of the ancient Greco-Roman world. Each city worshipped its favorite deities and built shrines around their images for worship. When Paul went to Athens he saw that it was literally filled with images of these divinities (Acts 17:16). The Parthenon of Athena overshadowed everything, but other deities were represented in every public space. There was Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty; Ares, the god of war; Artemis, the goddess of fertility and wealth; Hephaestus, the god of craftsmanship.

Our contemporary society is not fundamentally different from these ancient ones. Each culture is dominated by its own set of idols. Each has its "priesthoods," its totems and rituals. Each one has its shrines—whether office towers, spas and gyms, studios, or stadiums—where sacrifices must be made in order to procure the blessings of the good life and ward off disaster. What are the gods of beauty, power, money, and achievement but these same things that have assumed mythic proportions in our individual lives and in our society? We may not physically kneel before the statue of Aphrodite, but many young women today are driven into depression and eating disorders by an obsessive concern over their body image. We may not actually burn incense to Artemis, but when money and career are raised to cosmic proportions, we perform a kind of child sacrifice, neglecting family and community to achieve a higher place in business and gain more wealth and prestige.

Read the rest of The Opportunity of Disenchantment

Read more articles on www.Christianity.com
Christian Living

quote:

ORIGINAL: deermousie

Francis Schaeffer said in the 70s that America worshipped personal peace and prosperity, but since then I think we've added freedom from legitimate authority and political correctness.

Our sin natures rule and the world is squashing us into its mold.

quote:

ORIGINAL: gralan
The biggest idol I see in the church, as always, has been the self.

quote:

ORIGINAL: RedRabbit

I see sacrificing doctrine for experience as an idol in churches today. People want to be comfortable and have feel good experience; It's the me centered focus just being packaged differently with big screens, and chourses, candles and labryniths. In fact media has become an idol for the church. - EA

quote:

Seminaries and their trainees often have sold the church the idea you have to be educated by the world in order to be a minister in God's church.

quote:

ORIGINAL: SamsonUSA

Hi gralan,

quote:

Seminaries and their trainees often have sold the church the idea you have to be educated by the world in order to be a minister in God's church.

Do you feel a Seminarian earning a Master's degree in biblical studies while learning under some of the most well respected Theologians alive today are being "educated by the world?"

quote:

ORIGINAL: RedRabbit

I see sacrificing doctrine for experience as an idol in churches today. People want to be comfortable and have feel good experience; It's the me centered focus just being packaged differently with big screens, and chourses, candles and labryniths. In fact media has become an idol for the church. - EA

quote:

Do you feel a Seminarian earning a Master's degree in biblical studies while learning under some of the most well respected Theologians alive today are being "educated by the world?"

quote:

ORIGINAL: SamsonUSA

Hi gralan,

quote:

Seminaries and their trainees often have sold the church the idea you have to be educated by the world in order to be a minister in God's church.

Do you feel a Seminarian earning a Master's degree in biblical studies while learning under some of the most well respected Theologians alive today are being "educated by the world?"

quote:

. The world says you are only qualified to do a job if you have a bachelors' or master's degree. This is exactly what the semiaries teach.

quote:

2. The world says that only professors are qualified to teach students. The seminaries teach the same.

quote:

The world says that the Bible may or may not be divinely inspired and is full of errors. A very large number of evangelical seminaries now hold to this view of partial inerrancy or no inerrancy.

quote:

Sadly I have been in churches where thier doctrine is an idol.

quote:

I'm in pursuit of a Masters degree in Theology. I'm having to go through the bachelor's program available in an associated college that approaches all material from a Christian worldview.

quote:

ORIGINAL: LCannon

I think it was Elisabeth Elliot that said, 'Satan hasn't come up with any new temptations since the beginning time[but]he doesn't have to. His old stale ones work just fine because we're[mankind]an easy mark.' The 'idols' are same ones that feed our appetites, vanities and envies of the '...the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world--the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches--comes not from the Father but from the world.'(1John 2:15,16)