By Dave Stuart Jr. | Freelance writer and educator, New York, New York. | February 2010
Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters
Timothy Keller
Dutton Adult, 2009, 240 pp., $19.95,
US.PenguinGroup.com
Though the title suggests that Keller only will focus on three idols, this book's exploration into the "sin beneath every sin" covers the gamut. Idols, Keller explains, are good things turned into ultimate things; therefore, even things such as family, spouse, children, moral performance and ministry can become our deepest, most enslaving desires. As a result, Keller teaches that you cannot understand your heart or your culture unless you understand idols.
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Keller's chapters read like his sermons—teaching from a central passage of Scripture, mining various cultural resources to illustrate the teaching and posing open-ended questions to the reader. In the process, Christians and skeptics respectfully are challenged. Finally, each chapter-sermon ends with how Jesus takes the kind of idolatry being treated and frees His followers from it.
Readers will find this exploration of idolatry personally illuminating and helpful in their pursuit of life changed through Christ.
