Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters

by Timothy J. Keller

“the incomplete joys of this world will never satisfy [the human] heart.”3 This strange melancholy manifests itself in many ways, but always leads to the same despair of not finding what is sought.

De Tocqueville says it comes from taking some “incomplete joy of this world” and building your entire life on it. That is the definition of idolatry. A

God was saying that the human heart takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them as the center of our lives, because, we think, they can give us significance and security, safety and fulfillment, if we attain

If anything becomes more fundamental than God to your happiness, meaning in life, and identity, then it is an idol.

Jesus had replaced money as Zacchaeus’s savior, and so money went back to being merely that, just money. It was now a tool for doing good, for serving people. Now that his identity and security were rooted in Christ, he had more money than he needed.

There is only one way to change at the heart level and that is through faith in the gospel.

idolatry he said, “Though few will own it, nothing is more common.” If we think of our soul as a house, he said, “idols are set up in every room, in every faculty.” We prefer our own wisdom to God’s wisdom, our own desires to God’s will, and our own reputation to God’s honor.