Idol stories are counterfeit gospels that can’t fulfil

Idols sell us cheap, knock-off, counterfeit gospel stories.

The best lies have a grain of truth.

They glimmer with truth that is twisted horribly out of shape. They are fantastical nightmares that lead only to despair.

Following their script only leads us further away from reality. From ourselves and from our creator. Plugged In – Connecting Your Faith with Everything You Watch, Read, and Play

21-23: When following idols what we do is substitute stories. The true gospel story that makes sense of us as humans gets substituted for a twisted version. Idols are parasitic. They feed off us.

The idols we worship can’t, and don’t, deliver what they promise on any level. Whether intellectually, emotionally or imaginatively. Daniel Strange, Plugged In – Connecting Your Faith with Everything You Watch, Read, and Play

The more closely a person or culture adheres to a biblical worldview, the closer they are to objective reality. The Gospel is subversive fulfilment of idol stories.

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” –C.S. Lewis, , The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses

Good has the monopoly on comfort

Transclude of 2-Cor-1#3

All comfort comes from God. All other comforts are false.

False idol stories we live by

• Expectation over expectancy (from The Shack)
  • Expectation is control
  • Expectancy is freedom
• Authenticity over integrity
  • Authenticity is demanding permission while letting our worldly form lash out
  • Integrity is truthfulness to who we are in Jesus

Authenticity is valued in the world. we want our influencers to be authentic. But authenticity doesn’t discern between the gold in us and the poop that the fall covered us in. It allows us to be impulsive ‘i feel this now so I’ll say this now’ - all in the name of authenticity. To refrain from voicing our feelings, opinions or reactions - regardless of whether they are true, loving, uplifting or good - would be inauthentic, i.e. a lie. But integrity gives us space to evaluate our emotions and reflexes, we get to hold them up to the light of Jesus and decide whether they are worth our time, or the time of others. –R