idolatry on Addiction

In his excellent book on the subject of power (Playing God), author Andy Crouch describes the connection between idolatry and addiction: In modern, secular societies perhaps the clearest example of ...

Nothing enslaves more than that which we think we cannot live without.

The central plot device of The Lord of the Rings is the Dark Lord Sauron’s Ring of Power, which corrupts anyone who tries to use it, however good his or her intentions. The Ring is what Professor To...

Lamenting a Living Son This is God’s own lament: a brokenhearted father mourning the loss of a still-living son.  Throughout the book, God has led Hosea to draw from moments of Israel’s past.  Here, ...

Steve Jobs’s idol was food. This is perhaps the most surprising and wrenching revelation of Isaacson’s admiring book: from early in his life, Steve Jobs was obsessed with food in ways that increasingl...

Preaching Commentary Lamenting a Living Son This is God’s own lament: a brokenhearted father mourning the loss of a still-living son.  Throughout the book, God has led Hosea to draw from moments of...

What many people call “psychological problems” are simple issues of idolatry. Perfectionism, workaholism, chronic indecisiveness, the need to control the lives of others—all of these stem from making ...

A glutton is one who raids the icebox for a cure for spiritual malnutrition.

Joy’s trick is to supply  Dry lips with what can cool and slake,  Leaving them dumbstruck also with an  ache Nothing can satisfy.

Tony Reinke does a great job capturing the deep ambivalence many of us feel about our smartphones in this short excerpt: This blasted smartphone! Pesk of productivity. Tenfold plague of beeps and ...

Great needs grow from great possessions.

If you love anything more than God, even if you believe in God, if there’s anything in your life that’s more important to you than God, than it is a master in your life…it will continually say, ‘serve...

A possession ought to belong to the possessor, not the possessor to the possession.

The heart clings to collected treasure. Stored-up possessions get between me and God. Where my treasure is, there is my trust, my security, my comfort, my God. Treasure means idolatry.

Humanity is thirsty for God, but we drink from cups that can hold no water. We draw well water and find that we are thirstier after we drink our fill. It is the water of self-hatred and rejection. It ...

To reach people we must appreciate and adapt to their culture, but we must also challenge and confront it. This is based on the biblical teaching that all cultures have God's grace and natural rev...

All idols begin by offering great things for a very small price. All idols then fail, more and more consistently, to deliver on their original promises, while ratcheting up their demands, which initia...

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the ...

Suppose my god is sex or my physical health or the Democratic Party. If I experience any of these under genuine threat, then I feel myself shaken to the depths. Guilt becomes neurotically intensified ...

Failure is a gift. When we are forced to drink the dust of our idols, we can begin to turn our sights toward home.

We are masters at creating an image, but we are novices at recognizing and repenting of the image we have created.

The heart of all this evil is idolatry itself. It is the de-godding of God.

My wife and I once knew a single woman, Anna, who wanted desperately to have children. She eventually married, and contrary to the expectations of her doctors, was able to bear two healthy children de...

All: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breat...

When people say, 'I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself,' they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's.

In Easter Everywhere: A Memoir, Darcey Steinke recounts how she, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, left her Christian profession. Moving to New York City she entered a life of club hopping and se...

The crux and crisis is that man found it natural to worship; even natural to worship unnatural things. . . . If man cannot pray, he is gagged; if he cannot kneel, he is in irons.

James 5:16 invites us to confess our sins so that we might be healed. Let us go before our Creator in humility and confession. Lord Almighty, we come to you in humility today. We have sought security...

Idolatry is not just a failure to obey God, it is a setting of the whole heart on something besides God.

Two golden rules at the heart of spirituality. You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character o...