Don’t Follow Your Heart: Commit Cultural Heresy
If the “follow your heart” religion is indeed the dominant religion of our cultural moment, as Williams has argued, Christians, for the love of God and the love of our neighbors, will need to commit cultural heresy. We only find our “true selves” in right relationship with God. Reject the death spiral of self-worship. Embrace the abundant life Christ offers.
“Follow your heart” is a slogan popularized by Disney movies, pop psychology, and social media. Ultimately, it is just another version of the oldest lie in the world: That you and I can be our own god.
In his new book Don’t Follow Your Heart: Boldly Breaking the Ten Commandments of Self-Worship, Professor Thaddeus Williams of Biola University has exposed “the cult of self” behind these mantras. The cult of self is, in a sense, the largest religion in the world and promises to elevate adherents to the place and prerogative of God. In the end, however, like all bad ideas about God and self, this lie dehumanizes us, leaving us empty, unsatisfied, and isolated.
Don’t Follow Your Heart is a must-read today, wise in its analysis and practical in its application. Today is the last day to receive a copy as our thank-you for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center this month. Just visit colsoncenter.org/January.
Williams shared more about the “the cult of self” in a recent conversation with Shane Morris on the Colson Center’s Upstream podcast. As he noted, everyone worships something.
For Paul, it’s never a question of the theist versus the atheist. For Paul, everybody worships. Everybody’s a worshipper. Everybody’s on their knees to someone or something, either the Creator or the creation.
The key is right worship. In today’s version of the world’s oldest idolatry, voices across our culture urge us always to put ourselves first, ultimately in the place of God and as the object of our devotion, allegiance, and obedience. At one point, Williams lamented: “Who isn’t telling us to follow our hearts?” This idea, however, has consequences:
Now when you erase the creator-creature distinction, which has happened in the mainstream culture, that attribute of simplicity, or even we might say impassibility, a lot of the divine attributes, sovereignty, we now start attributing to ourselves.
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The Empty Shell of Originality
This craving for uniqueness is a race to escape the reality of our human nature. You were made to mirror God’s glory as a free creature of a Sovereign God. To despise this truth is to despise your humanity, and to succumb to beast-hood; descending into the thoughtlessness of a herd creature. Every glory of art, science, literature, music, and mathematics accomplished by mankind is a borrowed glory.
There is a nefarious lust within us as humans. It’s a craving for uniqueness, originality, and innovation. This is seen clearly in how insistent modern man is on society’s unquestioned acceptance of every person’s supposedly unique identity. It also shows up the erasure of great men and women from history. We don’t want to be reminded of the glories of past generations because that would cast a shade on our lame livestream.
No matter how dearly we believe in our individuality and uniqueness, there’s a truth that haunts at every turn: absolutely everything you are and do is imitative. Peter tells us that we receive a “vain tradition” from our forefathers; a tradition of conformity to sin (1 Pt. 1:14,18). Solomon tells us there’s nothing new under the sun (Ecc. 1:9). Generations rise and fall, but they invariably follow each other’s footsteps of folly.
This craving for uniqueness is a race to escape the reality of our human nature. You were made to mirror God’s glory as a free creature of a Sovereign God.
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The Blueness of the Wound
In an age of comfort & ease it is all too tempting to think that afflictions are an inconvenience to our happiness. But the Word reveals to us that all our pains, whether inflicted by our own foolishness, or due to the sorrows that still fill this world, are means which the Lord brings about our true happiness. May the Lord forgive us as a nation for hating the stern rebukes of God’s Word through the faithful preaching of righteousness. May God grant us in His church tender hearts to feel in the sting of conviction and see in the bruises of our chastisement God’s lovingkindness, His purging holiness, His great mercy towards us.
In a recent reading through Proverbs around our dinner table, I was struck by a proverb that takes a bit of pondering to make sense of:
“The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil: so do stripes the inward parts of the belly (Pro. 20:30).”
To rephrase this verse, the black & blue of a bruise is the visible proof that the body is remedying some wound which struck the body. God not only designed your body to repair itself from being wounded, but also made that healing visible.
We’re naturally averse to suffering and pain. We try to avoid afflictions. But God’s kindness refuses to let the evil abide in us, and sends us hand-selected chastisements to purge our hearts. A stubborn child, a lawless criminal, a backsliding saint will all need to meet with the various, but stern, correcting strokes of justice. The parents must apply the rod. The judge must give punitive measures. The elders must withhold the Supper.
But the pain of discipline, the sting of rebuke, the sharpness of affliction aren’t ends in and of themselves.
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Be Careful What You Permit (2 Kings 15-16)
Drifting away from your family devotions leads in a certain direction. Allowing some sin in your life and not doing anything about it will lead to greater sin in the future. It is much easier to stop things when they are smaller. Let’s serve God with all our hearts and be careful not to step aside to the right or to the left.
Have you heard of the “slippery slope” argument? It is the assertion that if you permit one thing, that will lead to other things being permitted. You see this kind of argument used every time a new type of law is introduced. There are those who think that this argument is flawed, that permitting one thing doesn’t necessarily have bigger consequences. Yet there is a case to be made that starting in a certain direction will mean that direction will continue. We see it illustrated in 2 Kings 15 and 16.
2 Kings 15 gives a brief summary of the reigns of seven kings, two of whom are from Judah, the southern kingdom. Azariah and his son Jotham are given much the same assessment from God. They both worshipped the true God, albeit with major problems. They did nothing about the high places where their people worshipped in a way that God had outlawed. They permitted this false worship, despite it being something God hated. When Jotham died, his son Ahaz came to the throne of Judah (2 Kings 16). Ahaz was assessed more harshly by God as someone who did not do what was right. He worshipped all kinds of other gods. And instead of permitting the worship at the high places, Ahaz participated in this kind of worship himself (v4).
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