The Idol You Don't Think You Have

Your greatest strength is probably your greatest idol.

The Rich Fool, Rembrandt - 1627

I spent thirty years building a career in institutional finance.

Managing billions in assets. Leading teams. Making decisions that moved markets.

I was good at it. Really good.

And that’s exactly what made it dangerous.

When Good Gifts Become Gods

Here’s what most Christians miss about idolatry:

We don’t bow to statues anymore.

We bow to our gifts.

Exodus 20:3 commands: “You shall have no other gods before Me.”

But when we read that, we think about obvious sins:

Lust.

Greed.

Ambition.

Addiction.

We rarely consider that our ministry could be our idol. That our family could be our functional god. That our theological knowledge could be the thing we worship instead of the God we claim to know.

Paul understood this better than most. In Philippians 3:7-8, he writes: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

Everything. Including the good things.

The Respectable Idol

The most dangerous idols wear the costumes of virtue.

Ministry becomes your idol when your identity is based on what you accomplish for God rather than what Christ accomplished for you.

Family becomes an idol when your children’s success matters more than God’s glory.

Your career becomes an idol when professional achievement provides what only Christ should provide: worth, identity, security.

Financial wisdom becomes an idol when you trust your strategy more than you trust God’s sovereignty.

These aren’t bad things. They’re good gifts.

But good gifts make terrible gods.

How to Identify Your Functional God

Ask yourself these questions:

What do you think about most when your mind is unoccupied?

What would devastate you if you lost it?

What do you sacrifice other priorities to protect?

Where do you find your sense of worth and identity?

Careful. Your answers may reveal your functional theology, not your stated theology.

The Path Forward

I’m not suggesting you abandon your gifts or callings.

I’m suggesting you hold them loosely.

Colossians 3:2 instructs us: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”

This doesn’t mean ignoring earthly responsibilities. It means refusing to let earthly gifts become ultimate things.

When God is truly your God, you can lose anything else—and the grief will be real, the pain profound—but you can never lose all that matters.

When anything else is your god, you can gain the whole world and still have nothing.

The Uncomfortable Reality

The idol you need to confront isn’t the obvious one.

It’s the gift you’re most proud of. The strength everyone celebrates. The thing you’d put on your LinkedIn profile or share at church.

That’s probably where your worship has been misdirected.

And until you’re willing to count it as loss for the sake of knowing Christ, it owns you more than you own it.

The question isn’t whether you have gifts.

The question is whether you’re willing to count them as loss for Christ.

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What good gift has become your functional god? The answer might be more uncomfortable than you expect.

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