The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

by Peter Rollins

The problem is that repressed knowledge always finds a way to express itself.

out of nothing (Original Sin), a god is created (the Idol). Not just any god, but a god-product that promises so much and delivers so little.

For instead of God being that which fills the gap at the core of our being, we shall soon discover something much more amazing and liberating: namely that the God testified to in Christianity exposes the gap for what it is, obliterates it, and invites us to participate in an utterly different form of life, one that brings us beyond slavery to the Idol.

That which we are conscious of in ourselves is called the ego. This ego is the image we have of ourselves, the image that we present on a daily basis through work, recreation, and social media.

Here our “beliefs” are nothing more than a form of Unbelief—they are the story we tell ourselves about ourselves in order to avoid the truth.

Our real beliefs are generally not to be found at the level of ego; rather they are more like the operating system of a computer, they are the heart of the machine that causes it to act in certain ways.

These stories that we grasp onto help us construct an image of ourselves that acts as an anchor; however, in so doing they obscure the truth that we are cast adrift and undone, a truth we attempt to avoid at all costs.

Even if we rebel against these stories, they still exert their control over us, for that which we oppose is that which we end up defining ourselves against.