David Powlison
Books
Citations
Quotes
Revisiting Idols of the Heart and Vanity Fair ☍
Self-analysis cannot save us. It can become simply one more form of self-fascination. Other-analysis cannot save others. It can become simply one more form of judgmentalism.
When we take the Bible’s God-relational verbs and turn them into questions, we are exposed for what we are.
Faith makes self-knowledge look to God and relate to him. Faith is not introspective…Love makes knowledge of others generous-hearted and merciful. Love is not judgmental.
Because diagnostic categories are philosophically and theologically “loaded,” a Christian who seeks to be true to the Bible’s system of value and interpretation must generate biblical categories and must approach secular categories with extreme skepticism.
Idols counterfeit aspects of God’s identity and character, as can be seen in the vignette above: judge, savior, source of blessing, sin-bearer, object of trust, author of a will which must be obeyed, and so forth. Each idol that clusters in the system makes false promises and gives false warnings: “if only … then …” … Because both the promises and warnings are lies, service to each idol results in a hangover of misery and accursedness.
Moralism—the working psychology of the proverbial man on the street—sticks with responsible behavior. Complex causalities are muted in toto. Behavioral psychologies see both drives and rewards, but cast their lot with the milieu, taking drives as untransformable givens. Both responsible behavior and a semi-conscious but renewable heart are muted. Humanistic psychologies see the interplay of inner desire/need with external fulfillment or frustration but cast their final vote for human self-determination. Both responsible behavior and the power of extrinsic forces are muted. Ego psychologies see the twisted conflict between heart’s desire and well-internalized social contingencies. But the present milieu and responsible behavior are muted. It is hard to keep three seemingly simple elements together.
I think Powlison is arguing here that need models seem plausible because idols can reduce to other idols; the “base” idol expresses a “need.”
Any one of the idols may have an independent hold on the human heart. Idols may reduce to one another in part: for example, a man with an intractable pornography and lust problem may be significantly helped by repentantly realizing that his lust expresses a tantrum over a frustrated desire to be married, a desire which he has never recognized as idolatrous. Idols can be compounded on top of idols. But sexual lust has its own valid primary existence as an idol as well. A biblical understanding of the idolatry motif explains why need models seem plausible and also thoroughly remakes the model.
Even the counterculture values of his “radical Christian” subculture can be understood in part as an idolatrous narrowing of the Christian life in reaction to the opposite idolatrous equation of Christianity with the American Dream.
Much of the variation among us is simply empowered by the “accidents” of life experience: tragedies or smooth sailing, handicaps or health, riches or poverty, New York City or Iowa or Uganda, a high school or a graduate school education, first-born or eighth-borh, male or female, born in 1500 B.C. or 1720 or 1920 or 1960 or 1990. Much individual variation is due to hereditary and temperamental differences: kinds of intelligence, physical coordination and capabilities, variation in talents and abilities, metabolic and hormonal differences, and so forth. In the last analysis, idiosyncratic choice from among the opportunities and options one encounters encounts for the nearly infinite range for individuality within the “commonalities” that biblical categories discern in us.
Christian counselors with a psychologizing drift typically are concerned with ministering God’s love to people who view God as the latest and greatest critic whom they can never please. But their failure to conceptualize people’s problems in the terms this article has been exploring inevitably creates a tendency towards teaching a “Liberal” version of the gospel. The cross becomes simply a demonstration that God loves me. It loses its force as the substitutionary atonement by the perfect Lamb in my place, who invites my repentance for heart-pervading sin.
The biblical gospel delivers from both personal sin and situation tyrannies. The biblical notion of inner idolatries allows people to see their need for Christ as a merciful savior from large sins of both heart and behavior. The notion of socio-cultural-familial-ethnic idolatries allows people to see Christ as a powerful deliverer from false masters and false value systems which we tend to absorb automatically. Christ-ian counseling counseling which exposes our motives—our hearts and our world—in such a way that the authentic gospel is the only possible answer.