{"id":18450,"date":"2025-07-05T01:39:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T05:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/?p=18450"},"modified":"2025-07-05T02:03:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T06:03:56","slug":"book-review-counterfeit-gods-by-timothy-keller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/?p=18450","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I haven't read the book, but summaries and reviews I've read show that this perhaps Keller's best work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I'll use <a href=\"https:\/\/www.danielim.com\/2018\/02\/20\/top-quotes-on-counterfeit-gods-by-timothy-keller\/\">Daniel Im's summary<\/a> for now, highlighting his famous quotes from the book:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>An idol is something we <strong>cannot live without<\/strong>. We must have it.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Anything <\/strong>can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Definition: An idol is anything more important to you than God<\/strong>. Anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God. Anything you seek to give you what only God can give. Anything that is so central and essential to your life, that should lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If I have that [idol], then I will feel like <strong>my life has meaning<\/strong>. Then I\u2019ll know I have value. And I\u2019ll feel significant and secure.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Bible uses three basic metaphors to talk about how people relate to the idols of their hearts: they <strong>love <\/strong>idols, <strong>trust <\/strong>idols, and <strong>obey <\/strong>idols. Spiritual adultery.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Idols give us <strong>a sense of being in control<\/strong> and we can locate them by looking at our nightmares: What do we fear the most? What if we lost it would make life not worth living?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Idols control us<\/strong> since we feel like we must have them or life is meaningless.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Whatever controls us is our Lord<\/strong>. The person who <strong>seeks power is controlled by power<\/strong>. The person who <strong>seeks acceptance is controlled by the people<\/strong> he or she wants to please. <strong>We do not control ourselves<\/strong>, we are controlled by the lord of our lives.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>We will <strong>always be disappointed<\/strong> by idols, there are <strong>four things<\/strong> you can do: You can <strong>blame the things <\/strong>that are disappointing you and try to move on to better ones (that\u2019s the way of continued idolatry and spiritual addiction), you can <strong>blame yourself<\/strong> and beat yourself (that\u2019s the way of self loathing and shame), you can <strong>blame the world<\/strong> (that\u2019s how you get hard, cynical, and empty), or you can <strong>reorient the entire focus<\/strong> of your life on God.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Jesus warns people far <strong>more often about greed than about sex<\/strong>, yet almost no one thinks they\u2019re guilty of it.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Tithing is a minimum standard<\/strong> for Christian believers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There\u2019s <strong>only one way<\/strong> to change at the heart level\u2026and that\u2019s through the <strong>gospel<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>One sign that you\u2019ve made success an idol is the <strong>false sense of security<\/strong> it brings. The <strong>poor <\/strong>and the marginalized <strong>expect suffering<\/strong>. They know that life on this earth is nasty, brutish, and short. <strong>Successful <\/strong>people are much <strong>more shocked<\/strong> and overwhelmed by troubles: Life isn\u2019t supposed to be this way.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It\u2019s a <strong>lust<\/strong>\u2026a longing <strong>to be inside<\/strong>...<strong>Until you conquer<\/strong> the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will <strong>remain<\/strong> ~ C.S. Lewis.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It is impossible <strong>to understand a culture<\/strong> without discerning its idols.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>When you <strong>pray <\/strong>and hope for something and <strong>you don\u2019t get it<\/strong> and you respond with explosive <strong>anger <\/strong>or deep despair, then <strong>you may have found your real god<\/strong> [idol].<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What are you looking to in order to <strong>justify yourself<\/strong>? It is a counterfeit god.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>You may know about the <strong>love of Christ with your head<\/strong>, but not your heart. How can that be remedied? This takes <strong>spiritual disciplines<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Spiritual disciplines are forms of <strong>worship<\/strong>. And it is worship that is the final way to <strong>replace the idols<\/strong> of your heart. You <strong>can\u2019t <\/strong>just get relief by figuring out your idols <strong>intellectually<\/strong>. You have to actually get the <strong>peace <\/strong>that <strong>Jesus gives<\/strong>\u2026and that <strong>only comes when you worship<\/strong>. analysis can help you discover truths, but then you have to <strong>pray <\/strong>them <strong>into your heart<\/strong>. That <strong>takes time<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I haven't read the book, but summaries and reviews I've read show that this perhaps Keller's best work. I'll use Daniel Im's summary for now, highlighting his famous quotes from the book:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theologization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18450"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18453,"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18450\/revisions\/18453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}