I was a big fan of Tim Keller’s first 2 books, The Reason for God, and The Prodigal God. Speaking largely as an apologist in the former and a pastor in the latter, Keller demonstrated his immense intellect and knack for offering keen observations of culture as it relates to the gospel of Jesus Christ. These strengths are applied directly to his latest work, Counterfeit Gods. This is Tim Keller at his finest as he subtly, yet powerfully, points out the things people, and particularly Americans, tend to turn into idols that take the place of God in our lives.

Taking on various arenas of life, Keller explains how even good things become bad things when they turn into God things. His working definition of an idol is simply anything that ascends to the place that only God should occupy in our lives, and he shows how career, money, sex, and even family can become idols in our lives, taking the place of God but lacking the ability to live up to the positions where we place them.

For example, when a parent places their kids in the place of God and wraps their entire identity in a child, an enormous amount of pressure is placed on the child, a pressure they will inevitably fail to live up to. This causes disappointment for the parent and disillusionment for the child. This is because the child isn’t God. He or she isn’t ever-faithful, ever-loving, all-powerful, and perfect. Only God is. It’s unfair to children and damaging to the parents when these situations occur.

This idolatry can show up anywhere. I especially found Keller’s chapter on power particularly helpful. When power is made into a God, it manifests itself in many places such as careers, parenting, and relationships; today, it mostly shows up in the political arena. People turn political parties, politicians, and ideologies into gods; subsequently, when their party loses, they are devastated. Their god has let them down, and now they do the only thing they can think of…they mock, ridicule, and blame the false political god that arose in its place. They lament the end of everything or complain about the status quo. The problem, of course, is that neither conservativism nor liberalism live up to god-status. Neither is perfect, but many convince themselves otherwise, believing that everything would be perfect if they could just elect the right person who embodies their values.

Keller has chapter after chapter that points out these idols in our culture, applying his Paul-like style of reasoning. All of this would be for naught, however, if people are not pointed to the true God. It’s not enough to remove idols. People have to be pointed to God as fully-revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Keller does not back down from this one bit. He continually pulls our idol-fashioned foundations from underneath us, but he quickly replaces it with the true foundation, the Rock, Jesus Christ.

This book should be required reading for all western Christians. Other cultures have their idols, but we in the West have truly made it an art form. The roots of this idolatry cannot be removed overnight, but this book is a powerful tool for attacking those roots and unashamedly and repeatedly reminding us what needs to exist in its place.