Three Reasons Calvin Was Right

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The French Reformer John Calvin famously observed that the human heart is a factory of idols.

He’s right, of course. We are prodigious in our ability to produce idols. We can make idols out of anything, and the better the thing is to begin with – love of family, love of country, desire for success in ministry – the more difficult it is to detect and the more deadly its effects.

But why is this so? Why are we so adept at setting up a created thing in the place of God – looking to a created thing for our identity, our protection, our provision? I think there are three reasons:

1. Human culture: bent toward idolatry
 
If everyone around you is an idolater, idolatry seems normal, and you’re an oddball if you’re not playing along. Idolatry is so deeply embedded in our customs that anyone who declines to participate is an outsider.

The business world often expects leaders to sacrifice their families on the altar of corporate success. Some coaches expect their athletes to focus all their attention on training and conditioning, regardless of what that focus does to their studies, their family life, or their time with God’s people in worship.

And the love of money is so deeply embedded in our culture that the title of the game show could stand as a rhetorical question, suggesting its own answer: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Everyone does! Who wouldn’t want to be a millionaire?

From where most of us stand, wealth looks like the ultimate answer to our problems, and the desire for money can easily take on the proportions of idolatry. I have used this simple four-step thought experiment to help people see how short-sighted this idolatry of money is. Try it for yourself:

1. Identify the three biggest problems in your life right now. 
2. Imagine that you just came into a gigantic windfall. You will never have to worry about money again for the rest of your life. 
3. How many of those top three problems were solved by the windfall?
4. One more question: Now that you are independently wealthy, what new problems must you deal with? What does this new wealth do to your relationships with your friends and your family? What new responsibilities does this wealth now press on you?

It’s not hard to understand why Paul said that the toxic yearning for the status and self-sufficiency that come with wealth – the love of money – is the root of all kinds of evil (2 Tim. 6:10).

2. My habits: bent toward idolatry

Here’s where it gets personal. Idolatry is so deeply ingrained in my habits that I commit idolatry routinely, without even realizing it. I would love to blame the influence of my culture, but I ratify my culture’s idolatry every time I bow my heart to my own idols. And that bowing has become part of my routine, both in my inner life and in my behavior.

This means that for the Spirit to break me free from these deadly habits, He must first draw my attention to the fact that my rebellion has become customary. It is, of course, unpleasant to be made aware that some ordinary part of my mindset is actually a token of my rebellion against the Almighty. But that is what it takes to break my idolatrous habits.

3. My own heart: steeped in idolatry

Here’s the bad news. Even if my culture didn’t influence me toward idolatry, even if my habits hadn’t become contaminated with idolatry, Calvin was right: my heart has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to create new idols all by itself. Thanks to the DNA mutation introduced into the human condition by Adam and Eve, I have a natural tendency to generate idols without any assistance from the outside.

With all this working against me – my culture, my habits, my own wicked heart – can I ever hope to break free from the idolatry that is so deeply embedded in my life?

Here’s the good news: the Spirit has committed Himself to rooting out our idols and cleansing our hearts. The process is painstaking, sometimes tedious, never smooth and linear. Toppling the idols in my heart is a three-steps-forward-two-steps-back process. But God’s Spirit knows what He’s doing. He has made it His mission to shut down the idol factory in my heart, demolish the idol-making machinery, and renovate my interior life so that it can be used as a cathedral dedicated to the worship of the Almighty.

The Apostle John closed his first letter with this simple command: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21). Thanks be to God that I don’t have to do all this on my own. Persevere.