I’ve been meaning to write about my trip to Chicago for a week now, but alas, time moves quickly! My trip was incredible. The time I got to spend there with Scott Brewer and John Dyson+ was awesome. We got to go to a Cubs game and see some of Downtown Chicago (on a side note, Downtown Phoenix, which I love, is nothing like Downtown Chicago. My hope is that Phoenix will grow into a miniscule version of what we experienced there). But the real reason we went was for the Gospel Coalition Conference. We were not disappointed.

Over and over we heard from the men leading the conference to “preach the Word” and be faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One of the speakers I was really looking forward to hearing from was Tim Keller. He is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan (speaking of downtowns!).

His talk was on idols and “how our idols will always let us down.” We all have idols, or “gods.” Our idols are those things that we look to to save us. These things might be a career, money, family, sex, etc. Using the example of the Apostle Paul in Acts 17 at Mars Hill, he stated that we need to understand the idols of our culture so that we can expose and confront them with the truth of the One God.

Keller gave examples of 3 different kinds of Idols: personal, religious, and cultural.

1. PERSONAL

• Money: in New York City, money is a god and you sacrifice everything to attain it, including your family.
• Romance: romance becomes an idol when you have “no boundaries” in a relationship…when you will do anything for a person. But he also used his good marriage as an example. He and his wife love each other, but the day will come when one of them will looking down on the other in a casket. What then if they have made their mate an idol?
• Children: If my children are happy…then I am worth something. We can live vicariously through our children and their successes. What happens when they don’t turn out like we want them to?

2. RELIGIOUS

• Truth: we can make an idol of “truth” and trust in the rightness of our doctrine or belief system, rather than in God Himself.
• Gifts: in the church, we can mistake spiritual gifts for spiritual fruit (love, joy, peace, etc.).
• Moralism: we can trust in “doing the right things” such as Bible study, prayer, going to church, not doing other things (you know what those are!) to save us.

3. CULTURAL: idea0logy

• Reason: since the age of the Enlightenment, modern man has been trusting in reason and education so save the world. We can believe that knowledge is power.
• Traditional Family: in many parts of the world, where there are still traditional cultures, family is everything. This can lead so such horrible things as “honor killings.”
• Western Individualism: No one must ever tell someone else that something they are doing is “wrong” or say something to offend them. Here is the great idol of our culture that I have been writing about.

We all need to identify the idols we trust in to save us. That includes us Christians, who worship the One God, but on a daily basis still worship other gods. But we also need to study the idols of the people we are ministering to.

Who are the idols of the unchurched in Downtown Phoenix.? How are we going to understand them, so that we can expose the false hope and bring true hope into people’s lives through the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Watch Keller’s presentation.

Shane+