Everyone Worships Something

Note: Last Updated 7/29/2024.

Timothy Keller:

     Race and nation are just two of an infinite number of good things that can become idols. The philosopher Paul Tillich argued that everyone must live for something in order that life have meaning, and whatever that thing is becomes “the ultimate concern.” Tillich doubted, therefore, that true, thorough atheism was really possible. He argued that if you don’t call the meaning of your life a god, it still functions like one and therefore everyone’s life is based on faith. In the same vein, the postmodern novelist David Foster Wallace said that in daily life “there is no such thing as . . . not worshipping.” He went on to say that “where[ever] you tap real meaning in life”—whether it is having enough money, being beautiful (or having a beautiful partner), or being thought smart or promoting some political cause—“everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” Wallace knew that modern, secular people would protest very strongly that they are not worshipping, but he likened these denials of secular people about worship denials of addicts. “The insidious thing,” he said, “is [that] they are unconscious. They are default settings.” Whatever you live for actually owns you. You do not really control yourself. Whatever you live for and love the most controls you.

(Timothy Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy, [New York: Viking, 2018], pp. 217-218.)

Paul Tillich:

     The fundamental symbol of our ultimate concern is God. It is always present in any act of faith, even if the act of faith includes the denial of God. Where there is ultimate concern, God can be denied only in the name of God. One God can deny the other one. Ultimate concern cannot deny its own character as ultimate. Therefore, it affirms what is meant by the word “God.” Atheism, consequently, can only mean the attempt to remove any ultimate concern—to remain unconcerned about the meaning of one’s existence. Indifference toward the ultimate question is the only imaginable form of atheism. Whether it is possible is a problem which must remain unsolved at this point. In any case, he who denies God as a matter of ultimate concern affirms God, because he affirms ultimacy in his concern. God is the fundamental symbol for what concerns us ultimately. Again it would be completely wrong to ask: So God is nothing but a symbol? Because the next question has to be: A symbol for what? And then the answer would be: For God! God is symbol for God. This means that in the notion of God we must distinguish two elements: the element of ultimacy, which is a matter of immediate experience and not symbolic in itself, and the element of concreteness, which is taken from our ordinary experience and symbolically applied to God. The man whose ultimate concern is a sacred tree has both the ultimacy of concern and the concreteness of the tree which symbolizes his relation to the ultimate. The man who adores Apollo is ultimately concerned, but not in an abstract way. His ultimate concern is symbolized in the divine figure of Apollo. The man who glorifies Jahweh, the God of the Old Testament, has both an ultimate concern and a concrete image of what concerns him ultimately. This is the meaning of the seemingly cryptic statement that God is the symbol of God. In this qualified sense God is the fundamental and universal content of faith.

(Paul Tillich, “Dynamics of Faith;” In: Philosophy of Religion: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Norbert O. Schedler, [New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1974], p. 162.)

Timothy Keller:

So I ask you, what will make you happy? What will really give you a satisfying life? Almost always you will answer by thinking of something outside of you. Some of us have our hopes set on romantic love, some on career, some on politics or a social cause, and some of us on money and what it will do for us. But whatever it is that makes you say, “If I have that, if I get there, then I’ll know I’m important, then I’ll know I have significance, then I know I’ll have security”—it’s likely something outside of you. Yet Jesus says there’s nothing outside of you that can truly satisfy the thirst that is deep down inside you. . . . Something gets in the way of our hearing what Jesus is talking about, and I think it’s that most of us aren’t able to recognize our soul thirst for what it is. As long as you think there is a pretty good chance that you will achieve some of your dreams, as long as you think you have a shot at success, you experience your inner emptiness as “drive” and your anxiety as “hope.” And so you can remain almost completely oblivious to how deep your thirst actually is. Most of us tell ourselves that the reason we remain unfulfilled is because we simply haven’t been able to achieve our goals. And so we can live almost our entire lives without admitting to ourselves the depth of our spiritual thirst.

     And that is why the few people in life who actually do reach or exceed their dreams are shocked to discover that these longed-for circumstances do not satisfy. Indeed they can enhance the inner emptiness by their presence. For example, years ago, the great tennis champion Boris Becker said, “I had won Wimbledon twice, once as the youngest player. I was rich. . . . I had all the material possessions I needed. . . . It is the old song of movie stars and pop stars who commit suicide. They have everything, and yet they are so unhappy. But I had no inner peace.” We might say, “I’d rather have his problem than mine.” But his point is that he has the same problem as ours, and like us, he thought money, sex, accomplishment, and fame would solve it. The difference is, he got all those things, and in the end they didn’t satisfy his thirst in the slightest. There is a famous Sophia Loren interview in which she said she had had everything—awards, marriage—but that “in my life there is an emptiness that is impossible to fulfill.”

     Everybody has got to live for something, but Jesus is arguing that, if he is not that thing, it will fail you. First, it will enslave you. Whatever that thing is, you will tell yourself that you have to have it or there is no tomorrow. That means that if anyone blocks it, you will become inordinately angry; and if you fail to achieve it, you will never be able to forgive yourself. But second, if you do achieve it, it will fail to deliver the fulfillment you expected.

(Timothy Keller, Encounters with Jesus, [New York: Dutton, 2013], pp. 27-29.)

Worshiping Other Gods.

Tessa Afshar: (Claudia & Elianna)

     “Why does your God insist that there is no other god? Even Jupiter for all his power acknowledges the existence of other gods.” Claudia played with the stem of a fig. “He sounds very limiting. It has to be him alone, to the exclusion of all others. Why should I give up Juno and Apollo and Venus if I want to pray to your God? Why can’t I have them all?”

     “Why have you forsaken all other men in order to be with Titus? Because he is your husband, and your heart and your body belong to him. You need no other man. He loves you, and he alone fulfills your needs. It is the same with the Lord, only more so, for he is a thousand times more loving, more protective, more glorious, more powerful than your wonderful husband. He would not put up with you chasing after other gods any more than Titus would accept you taking lovers.”

(Tessa Afshar, Land of Silence, [Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2016], p. 237.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria