Counterfeit Gods

Timothy Keller's latest book, Counterfeit Gods, was under the tree for me at Christmas along with several other books, so I have happily started the new year with a backlog of new books to read and recently finished this one. I had found his look at the parable of the prodigal son in The Prodigal God to be refreshing and insightful so I was eager to see what this new book might hold. I think overall I garnered more from his prior work, but I thought a couple of his points in this latest work very helpful nonetheless.

The book is a look at idolatry and how idolatry creeps into our lives in subtle ways which we may not recognize. Paul, of course, had pointed out in the first century that greed is a form of idolatry (Col. 3:5) that is much more subtle than offering a dead animal in a pagan temple, but is idolatry just the same. Most idols are 'good' things gone bad, like prosperity, success, liberty, truth, beauty, and intimacy. The greater the good, the more likely we are to think it will fulfill us. His basic definition is that counterfeit gods consist in 'anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living'. He points out the every human being must live for something and for some hope, and when we substitute for God anything else such that it becomes our reason to keep going, then we have an idol, a counterfeit god. Most of us in modern western culture have idols like self fulfillment, individual freedom, financial independence; in Biblical times their idols had more to do with family, passing on the heritage to an heir, and standing in the community. All ages and cultures, though, are prone to their own counterfeit gods.

He takes an interesting look at Abraham and Jacob and how their cultural icons became challenges to their souls as love (for Jacob,Leah) and family (for Abraham) were idols that God had to purge from their lives, but I thought some of his insights into our culture were especially compelling including:

• Political activism: he says 'one of the signs that an object is functioning as an idol is that fear becomes one of the chief characteristics of life...if our counterfeit god is threatened in any way, our response is complete panic. We do not say,'What a shame, how difficult,' but rather, 'This is the end! There is no hope!'. Wow. How descriptive both of how Democrats responded to Bush's election and how Republicans responded to Obama's election! He goes on: 'Another sign of idolatry in our politics is that opponents are not considered to be simply mistaken, but to be evil.' Again, both sides of the political isle are guilty here. Politics has indeed become an idol in our culture, including our churches.
• Enemies: quoting the 17th century English minister David Clarkson he points out that 'many make even their enemies their god...when they are more troubled, disquieted, and perplexed at apprehensions of danger to their liberty, estates, and lives from men' than they are concerned about God's displeasure. Again, for a 17th century preacher he surely described the current 21st century conservative American anxiety over liberalism to a tee.
• Doctrinal correctness: he says, 'Idolatry functions widely inside religious communities when doctrinal truth is elevated to the position of a false god. This occurs when people rely on the rightness of their doctrine for their standing with God rather than on God and his grace...trust in the rightness of their views make them feel superior'. This superiority of views is similar to what causes political idolatry as well.
• Love of your country and your people: in a discussion that began with the French Revolution and how it turned into terror he concludes that 'when love of one's people becomes an absolute, it turns to racism. When love of equality turns into a supreme thing, it can result in hatred and violence toward anyone who has led a privileged life.' How many times has that played out in the last century, in Russia, China, and the more recent Islamic revolutions?

All of this, he concludes, is due to preferring our own wisdom, our own desires, our own reputation over God's wisdom, desires, and honor.

I, for one, find it too easy to dismiss idolatry as an ancient vice, one not very applicable to me and current times. This book provided a check to that kind of modern bias.

Olympic competition

As I sit in a hotel tonight I have the Olympics on the tv while I do some computer catch-up. They interviewed the American women's snowboard team a few minutes ago and the athletes were talking about how their toughest competition is from their teammates who are also their best friends, whom they travel with, train with, live with. Yet they strive to do their best knowing that if they win their friend does not win. Despite that competition, they love their teammates. The do not 'hate the competition'; they do strive to be the best and do their best.

It was a very good interview in my opinion. One of the things that irritates me enormously in the business world is when so-called experts like Jack Welch talks about things like 'don't fall in love with your team because some of them are turkeys' as well as things he and others say about seeing the competition as the enemy, 'kicking butt' (but more coarsely said than that), and the like. Coming from the likes of Jack Welch makes it all the more irritating. Here is a man who lied to and cheated on his wife, running off with a younger business colleague. Here is a man who played all the same kinds of financial shenanigans as Wall Street did to inflate GE earnings that have since imploded just like Wall Street, which is to say he lied to investors just like he lied to his wife. A friend of mine once told me that a man who will lie to his wife will lie to anyone. Welch is a good example of that truism. So we should listen to him on how to treat employees when he clearly doesn't know how to treat family and investors? I think not.

Any leader that does not love his team even when they are not performing is not a leader, just a tyrant. Welch got it wrong, the snowboarders got it right: we must love our people, but we must also insist on good performance. I think I have read about that somewhere else as well: the gospels. I have been very displeased with much of what goes on in the name of athletics, which has mostly been about extreme narcissism of the athletes and coaches. This group of snowboarders, though, got it right.

Breathtaking!

We hear it used regarding everything from the latest movie to new cars, but driving through the Yosemite valley for the first time gives meaning to the word 'breathtaking'! Three days ago I had the joy of seeing this amazing valley for the first time, and even with significant portions of the park closed for the winter it more than lived up to its billing.



The park stands in stark contrast to the central valley of California, which I traversed to get there. I had been in Palo Alto Monday through Wednesday for business meetings, and after having dinner there with a colleague I drove across the valley to Merced, CA, Wednesday evening. It was a misty and moonless night, so I couldn't see much along the road, though I did get the umistakeable smell of manure wafted my way every so often. The central valley in Califormia is one of the most intensively farmed regions in the world, so I guess I should have expected that. I arrived at Merced for the night a bit after 10 pm and clicked on PBS while unpacking in the Hampton Inn, and sure enough the National Parks documentary was on and the episode about the founding of Yosemite was playing! It was the perfect way to start my visit.




I got underway at about 7 am the next morning for the 1.5 hour drive to the park, and now I could see some of the valley. At first it was mile after mile of orchards on a landscape so flat that it makes the corn fields of central Ohio seem hilly. I would have to describe this valley as the Appalachia of the west, except without the hills and with better productivity from the farms. There are many places I would never want to live, and this is one of them. Farms and food processing plants are the dominant industries, and from the looks of the housing it appears to be home to many of the region's poor.




After about 40 minutes the flatlands slowly gave way to rocky, rolling hills with scrubby trees and cattle grazing. This was more scenic but the land looked very poor. It was getting cloudy as rain and snow were expected that evening, so the mountains were not yet in view, but the road was climbing slowly uphill. Around the town of Mariposa, about an hour into the drive some tall Ponderosa pine trees began to appear and you could start to see some peaks in the distance. The last 30 minutes or so was along the Merced river bank and the terrain grew ever more rough, but still no snow. I arrived at the park entrance by 8:30 am and there was still no snow, the entrance being at about 3000 feet elevation. You could start to see snow on the distant peaks, though.




After entering the park, things changed dramatically. Within a couple of miles I was into snow covered country. The entire Yosemite valley is only about 7 miles long, but driving through it the first time took me about 2 hours. There was no traffic at all. I just had to stop every couple hundred yards to take pictures, walk to a water fall, or just stop and stare. You can almost hear yourself gasp as you go around each corner and your eye lands on yet another breathtaking view. There are a variety of vistas of Bridalview Falls, Yosemite Falls, El Capitan, and Half Dome as you move around in the valley. At about noon I headed up towards the Tioga Road to see the Tuolumne grove of giant sequoias. That road gave still more great views from above the valley. The hike to and from the grove, a bit over 2 miles roundtrip over a snow-packed trail, offered the quiet of a forest trail while the massive trees gave yet another perspective of how unique this place is.



The contrast to the central valley is so stark that it is almost overwhelming. In that way it is like the Grand Canyon and the Tetons/Yellowstone in that the views are so dramatic and in such contrast to some of the nearby flatlands that all 3 of them take your breath away. Just as my reaction to the central valley was that this was a place I would never want to live, these places make you never want to leave. They are very different from each other but they are all awe inspiring.



There are a lot of places I have been and a lot more that I would like to see, though for most of them I would not do everything I possibly could do to get there. Yosemite had been on my list of 'must see' places for quite some time, and it was a joy to finally get there. I hope to return to see some of the areas that were closed for winter, like Glacier Point and the Mariposa Grove of sequoias. It is one of only 3 places for which I think every American should do all that they can do to visit at some time during their life: Yosemite, the Grand Tetons/Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon are unlike anywhere else in the world.

A New Year

Today is the last day of January. Already. We got our Christmas tree taken down a couple of weeks ago and now the Valentines Day decorations have appeared. The new year season is officially over though I still want to take a last few moments to look back.



Several years ago as we headed into the first of what turned out to be 3 waves of downsizing at work I was wondering whether I would still be working there at age 55. This past summer was the 3rd wave and I hope the last for a long while, but I am a year past 55 now and I am grateful not to be on the job market at this time in life and in this economy. While there remains much turmoil in the economy and many questions about where our country and the world are headed, there is also much to be grateful for. The earthquake in Haiti this month reminds me in another way how fortunate I am to still have so much to be thankful for and things to look forward to. Entering the new year is a good time to pause for thanksgiving.



Among those things I look forward to is a visit to Yosemite in a few days. Last summer as I watched the Ken Burns documentary on the national parks I had made it a goal to get to Yosemite some day. As things have turned out, I will be traveling to the west coast this week for business meetings and will be able to take some vacation time afterwards to make a short visit to Yosemite for the first time. What a treat!



I had prayed a year ago that our national leaders would be 'mugged by reality' and some of that appears to be happening. Politics is never a place to put much hope, but a headlong rush in any direction, left or right, is cause for concern. The headlong rush seems, for now at least, to have slowed. I am grateful.



I take a lot for granted, but some of those things force my attention at times. This week the sewer line from our house to the street backed up due to roots growing into the pipe. Fortunately our house had a relief valve out in the yard so it did not show up in the bathtub! Among many things the builder did wrong in our house, they did that one right! Anyway, as the folks in Haiti go without even the most basic sanitation facilities, we still take sewers, water, and electricity for granted until they are missing for a short time. How great to have a working sewer system! How much more I should be thankful for other, more enduring things that I also mostly take for granted: life, family, forgiveness.



So, as January ends and I consider the new year, I have much to be thankful for and much still to look forward to. Happy (late) New Year!

Is Anyone Normal Anymore?

Last weekend we had our annual deacons retreat during which the oncoming deacons who are beginning a new term of service share their testimony of how they came to faith in Christ. I was struck this year by the number of men who had at least one alcoholic parent. As with most years, a great many of them also had been through a divorce of their parents as a child. Since divorce rates have been high for almost 50 years now, the number of men having grown up in broken homes was not a surprise, but I was struck by the number of men with alcoholic parents and the result that had in terms of periodic abusive treatment of them or their mother, and how it led to many of them abusing alcohol and other substances later.



Then on Thursday of this week we had a dinner event from the men's ministry at our church at which a man in our congregation shared his story of growing up in an abusive home in which he and his brother first endured the divorce of his parents and then later his father used his girlfriend to sexually abuse both of his elementary age sons. Since so few men are willing or able to discuss this sort of thing in a public event, it was a story that elicited in me both shock and outrage. I can somewhat understand (though I don't condone)how a man might resort to alcohol or chasing women after a hurtful divorce, but I cannot comprehend how a father could intentionally drag his young children into the cesspool with him. Hearing this man's life story made me wonder, in our society where perversion of many kinds is pushed as simply alternative lifestyles, how many other children have lived through this sort of thing. It made me wonder whether anyone is normal anymore.



Sexual abuse and drug use, including alcohol, are nothing new of course. It is well documented how perverse Alexander the Great and the Roman emperors were. Some have used this to argue that these things are not perverse, that we should accept them as normal since they have such a long history among 'great' people. We should ask folks like this man who told his story on Thursday instead. He was very clear on the damage it did, and how he struggled to eventually extend forgiveness to his father. It was not normal, and it certainly was not good.



One of the reasons that early Christians stood out in the Roman empire was that their moral lives were so distinctively different from the perversion that surrounded them. One of the great impacts of Christianity is the way it improved the lot of women and children in terms of ending abuse when their husbands and fathers embraced Christ. It may well be that apart from a Christian culture the abuse of sexuality and alcohol may be 'normal', but it has not been normal in cultures that have been dominated by Christians. We can expect to see more and more of this if our culture continues on its current path of abandoning Christianity.

The Formality of Christmas

It was cold in Atlanta this morning, 18 degrees F, which was about the same temperature that it was when we left Strongsville, OH, yesterday morning. As a result most folks dressed warmly for church today, although some teenagers remained obstinate and still showed up without a warm coat or wearing flip-flops since being cool was clearly more important to them than being warm. I am sure they were very cool indeed! Nonetheless, their overly-casual attire as well as some of the folks in my generation who showed up in jeans and sweatshirts reminded me of how very few formal events remain in our culture.



In one of his writings C. S. Lewis talks about the occasions in which formality is a good thing, though I don't recall where he says this at the moment. I agree with him that there is a proper place for formality, and I think our culture has lost track of that. Lewis pointed out that one of the functions of formality is to cause us to pay heed to the importance of the event or the vows or the issues at stake. It used to be that folks wore suits to conduct business, attend a conference, to attend church and take communion, to graduate from school, even to attend school. These were in addition to weddings, funerals, and events of state like inaugurations and coronations. In each case the intention seems to have been to make an issue of the importance of the commitments and decisions being made. It was felt that formality in both dress and behavior reinforced the need for seriousness, honesty, fair dealing, and the keeping of commitments whether in business, school, government, or interpersonal affairs. Now we more and more dress down for school, business, church and many other places that were once more formal. I wonder sometimes at the size and overblown expense of weddings these days which runs counter to this overall trend. It is as if all the weight of the need for fomality in our culture has fallen solely onto weddings, as we have abandoned it in so many other places. Yet even there the solemnity has started to fall away as some folks dance down the aisle or stand barefoot on a beach despite the extravagant expense for clothes and receptions. I do not think weddings will be able to bear this weight without a better understanding of why formality is in fact appropriate at times, and those times need to be more frequent than weddings.



I am not of the opinion that dressing more formally for church creates a more penitent heart or a more sincere worship. Nor do I think that anyone lacking money for nice clothes should be left out. I do think it better reflects the importance of the occasion, however, and most folks dressing down these days pay more for their jeans with holes in them than they would need to pay for more formal attire. I do think that attire contributes to setting a tone for an activity and reinforces expectations for behavior. Even kids at school are less likely to roll in the mud when they are wearing a tie.



All of which reminds me of Christmas. While I can get tired of dragging out the decorations and setting up the tree, I do think it sets a tone and an expectation. Special musical events with choirs and orchestras in formal dress focusing on Christmas are events I love. While I am often already tired by the time we leave to attend church on Christmas Eve, the candlelight service with its entirely predictable yet solemn candlelighting and Lord's Supper service sets a tone for the day that is formal yet right. This can be overdone, especially the decorations, yet the idea of special, formal events, special clothing, special decorations remind us of the importance of the event and cause us to pause and remind ourselves why we are celebrating. And that is a good thing.

Syncretism and Christmas

There was an article in USA Today on December 10 based on a recent Pew religious survey that had some statistics from the survey on current U.S. religious beliefs. The findings included things like 1 in 5 Roman Catholics and 1 in 4 of the overall population believe in reincarnation, about 1 in 4 believe in astrology, and 65% have incorporated some elements of far eastern or New Age beliefs into their thinking. This mixing of contradictory beliefs is called syncretism, and it is nothing new even though the article seems to think it is.

This subject tends to come up at Christmas time because of the mixture of various Christian and non-Christian elements in our Christmas traditions. Things like Christmas trees have roots in pagan traditions in Europe, along with mistletoe, lights, and yule logs. There is also the often crass commercialism of the holidays that stands in stark contrast to the baby born in poverty on that first Christmas. The Pilgrims forbade things like Christmas trees along with overt feasting, feeling that it detracted from the spiritual significance of the day.

I think syncretism has always been a cause for concern, though I am not overly concerned about the Christmas traditions. Nowadays I am concerned about what I see as an easy acceptance by many Christians of things like abortion, homosexuality, and unmarried co-habitation whle at the same time ignoring things like the meaning of baptism, the Lord's supper, and personal holiness. While this is not an incorporation of different religions into Christianity, it is an incorporation of godlessness into their lives and a willful ignoring of anything beyond the very basics of the faith.
This is not exactly syncretism but it is a weakening of the faith in a manner similar to syncretism. And I have no doubt that there are also some who are so ignorant of the faith that they mindlessly include new age, eastern, and other beliefs in their beliefs as well as simple godlessness.

Christmas trees, lights, yule logs, and such do not bother me, though. Perhaps if I had been living at a time when those things were done by pagans who later converted I would have been more concerned. In those days, many centuries ago, the practices would have been associated directly with non-Christian beliefs. But these things have been practiced by serious believers for so long and their meaning so thoroughly re-interpreted (or co-opted some would say) that they do not carry pagan connotations any longer. Indeed, the Islamic world would no doubt reject them because they are so thoroughly associated with Christians.

Syncretism is and always has been an issue for Chritianity, but today it is not Christmas trees that should cause concern.