Counterfeit treadmill

How we turn good things into false gods | Marvin Olasky

Illustration by Krieg Barrie

Two books about idolatry—one old, one new—are well worth reading. Herbert Schlossberg's Idols for Destruction (1983) is a scholarly look at the idols many of us worship: money, power, nature, humanitarianism. . . . Tim Keller's Counterfeit Gods (2009) is a pastoral look at the idols many of us worship a quarter-century later: money, power, sex, moral excellence. . . .

Schlossberg concluded that only Christianity could overcome the envious spirit that waters the poisonous plants of secular politics and socialism. Keller concludes that the human heart is an idol factory that takes not only bad stuff but "good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things."

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