Reading the book of Jeremiah, Counterfeit Gods, and The Screwtape Letters simultaneously has created a wonderful confluence of thought that I never foresaw. Idolatry is named and shamed (or in Screwtape's case, praised) in each text, with a similar cure offered to those who desire to stop turning something good into something ultimate.
Keller's diagnosis is simple and direct:
The Big 3 -- sex, money and power -- get separate treatment in his book, with each idol shown to dehumanise the human that creates and worships it. But Keller does not end on a note of despair:
C.S. Lewis says things as only C.S. Lewis can. At the end of The Screwtape Letters, the demon Screwtape is resenting the loss of a human to the Enemy's (God's) camp. He had instructed his protege Wormwood to create a continual flow of idols in the life of this new Christian, but the game is up. The young demon's efforts will be futile, for the Christian has discovered what Keller was talking about. So Screwtape laments:
Such words of conviction and promise as found in Counterfeit Gods and The Screwtape Letters can only be uttered because of the primary utterances of God. Speaking to his beloved Israel, through the weeping prophet Jeremiah, YHWH says,
These are no shallow evils with a silver bullet solution. The problem, as YHWH goes on to say, is deep-seated:
What an image. The heart bears the marks of idolatry as if it were irrevocably engraved into the human constitution. The desire for counterfeit gods, the need to fashion our broken cisterns, is burned onto our innermost being. But YHWH would not let such engravings have the last word. He would do something new:
Only the presence of God is powerful enough to remove words engraved with the tip of a diamond and to replace them with words of life. The lie of idolatry is that joy can be obtained when people create their own gods. The truth of the gospel is that joy abounds when God creates his own people. The vocation and privilege of the church is to be that people; people who, says Paul,
Keller's diagnosis is simple and direct:
The human heart is indeed a factory that mass-produces idols.
The Big 3 -- sex, money and power -- get separate treatment in his book, with each idol shown to dehumanise the human that creates and worships it. But Keller does not end on a note of despair:
Is there any hope? Yes, if we begin to realise that idols cannot simply be removed. They must be replaced. If you only try to uproot them, they grow back; but they can be supplanted. By what? By God himself, of course. But by God we do not mean a general belief in his existence. Most people have that, yet their souls are riddled with idols. What we need is a living encounter with God.
C.S. Lewis says things as only C.S. Lewis can. At the end of The Screwtape Letters, the demon Screwtape is resenting the loss of a human to the Enemy's (God's) camp. He had instructed his protege Wormwood to create a continual flow of idols in the life of this new Christian, but the game is up. The young demon's efforts will be futile, for the Christian has discovered what Keller was talking about. So Screwtape laments:
All the delights of sense, or heart, or intellect, with which you could once have tempted him, even the delights of virtue itself, now seem to him in comparison but as the half nauseous attractions of a raddled harlot would seem to a man who hears that his true beloved whom he has loved all his life and whom he had believed to be dead is alive and even now at his door.
Such words of conviction and promise as found in Counterfeit Gods and The Screwtape Letters can only be uttered because of the primary utterances of God. Speaking to his beloved Israel, through the weeping prophet Jeremiah, YHWH says,
...my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. - Jer. 2:13
These are no shallow evils with a silver bullet solution. The problem, as YHWH goes on to say, is deep-seated:
The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron; with a point of diamond it is engraved on the tablet of their heart... - Jer. 17:1
What an image. The heart bears the marks of idolatry as if it were irrevocably engraved into the human constitution. The desire for counterfeit gods, the need to fashion our broken cisterns, is burned onto our innermost being. But YHWH would not let such engravings have the last word. He would do something new:
Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. - Jer. 31:31-33
Only the presence of God is powerful enough to remove words engraved with the tip of a diamond and to replace them with words of life. The lie of idolatry is that joy can be obtained when people create their own gods. The truth of the gospel is that joy abounds when God creates his own people. The vocation and privilege of the church is to be that people; people who, says Paul,
...are a letter from Christ...written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
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