Hiding In Our Blind Spot
The Quiet Replacement of Dependence With Self-Rule
Consider This: What if the greatest threat to the church isn’t opposition from outside, but substitution from within?
In my last post, Declaration of Dependence, I highlighted how God created humanity as his image bearers—the imago Dei—with the unique quality of being fully dependent upon him. In other words: He’s the object we are designed to reflect. So reflecting him perfectly requires that we contribute nothing to the image.
Practical translation: We were made to receive all our sense of identity, meaning, purpose and passion from him, not from within ourselves. And to do this requires comprehension of our embracing an identity of dependence.
Here’s the link, if you want to review the article before continuing:
In this article, I will explore the consequences the previous article creates—specifically, what happens if we choose NOT to declare our dependence. The answer is compelling, especially for the church: idolatry.
Idolatry is not primarily about worshiping idol figurines. It is about creating and maintaining a false perception (an “image”) of God. And because we are created as God’s image-bearers, having a false perception of God automatically creates a false perception of ourselves.
What we (specifically the church in the West) must come to terms with is that we have inherited a pattern of faith that incorporates the idolatry of the world we live in. We have adopted the world’s contemporary perspectives and thinking patterns regarding identity. The process has been gradual over the course of many years, but the cumulative effects now put us in a tenuous and dangerous position.
I get that such a message to the Western church (that considers itself faithful) carries a sting, and sounds sensationalistic and hyper-spiritual. But I encourage you to see and hear it differently. This isn’t a charge of insincere devotion, it is a diagnosis of something deeper.
Idolatry is one of the most common of human tendencies. It should not escape our notice that God included it as the focus of the first three of the Ten Commandments. It was present throughout most of the nation of Israel’s history. It was active in at least two of the seven churches in Revelation—only 40 years after they were started (from Paul’s training in the Hall of Tyrannus in Ephesus in Acts 19). It’s a tendency we can fall into as easily as we fall out of bed in the morning.
And speaking of falling …
The First Idolatry
It should be a warning siren to us that the most striking example of idolatry happens in the first pages of Scripture. The serpent tempted Eve and Adam into a subtle but massive change of perception:
“God is keeping knowledge from you—so he isn’t who you think he is.”
“You can acquire this knowledge if you take charge of yourselves—then you’ll be able to realize your potential.”
Interestingly, both were half true (as is usually the case for the enemy’s deceptions):
God, of course, did know that their eyes would be opened. He was absolutely holding back revelation from them—because it would be destructive for them.
They, of course, didn’t know all that God knew. And gaining the knowledge God was withholding was easily within their grasp—BUT …
Having this knowledge wouldn’t make them like God, and in fact …
They were already like God in every way that truly mattered.
Both attacks were distractions (the Deceiver’s go-to strategy) that drew Adam and Eve’s attention away from the core issue: Their comprehension of identity. This corruption of belief is the primary, two-part mechanism of idolatry:
A false perception of God (i.e. we see God as less than he is).
A false perception of ourselves (i.e. we see ourselves as more than we are, and so we trust in ourselves).
It is this mechanism, wielded by the craftiest deceiver of all time, that we must actively guard against. For we are not immune to it, even given the dedication of our religious fervor—which is actually part of his strategy for distracting us.
But, Jesus Is Lord and Savior …
I hear the reply forming in your mind: “But we’ve declared Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We stand redeemed in his completed work on the cross and the redemption in his blood. We have the Scriptural Canon, which we uphold and teach in our vast array of seminaries, schools and churches. We have the legacy of theological orthodoxy. We have the Holy Spirit guiding us into all truth and the Great Commission to inspire us.”
And what you might be thinking subconsciously, “We’re more intelligent than that. We’ve progressed beyond the point where we would embrace idolatry.”
I’ll concede that, generally speaking, the Western church’s beliefs are sound at the conscious and rational level. But what we don’t recognize is that conscious, rational beliefs don’t actually define our perception of reality. Our unconscious and intuitive beliefs do.
For example, it’s our unconscious beliefs that produce things like …
Anxiety despite belief in God’s sovereignty,
Self-reliance despite professing trust, and
Identity rooted in religious or spiritual performance.
That unconscious level of belief is what’s most concerning.1
In other words, our conscious, rational thoughts aren’t lining up with what we unconsciously, intuitively believe under the hood of our faith. The conscious and rational beliefs can easily become mere details the Deceiver uses as distractions. He’s skillfully kept the Western church in an entrenched pattern we rarely recognize.
Just as the Israelites historically fell into worshiping Baal as a part of worshiping God, we too can fall—have fallen—into incorporating the identity and thinking patterns of the world into our faith practices.
And it’s killing our witness as the church.
Think Again
We would do well to give the prospect of idolatry some serious consideration—and perhaps from a different perspective than normal.
To begin with, we must understand four things about it:
Our zeal, history, theology and resources won’t prevent idolatry. They bring very little to the table in dealing with idolatry, and may actually make us more vulnerable to it.
Idolatry is inherently deceptive. We will only see it when we look in our blind spots—which requires admitting that we actually have blind spots.
Idolatry has a frog-in-the-kettle dimension to it. It comes on gradually, insidiously. It often seems positive in the beginning stages. Meaning: We don’t realize we’re in trouble until things have gotten really bad.
We’re incredibly susceptible. If living in Eden without a fallen identity didn’t prevent Adam and Eve from stumbling into idolatry, what does that say about our situation?
To give an example of how “thinking again” can help us assess idolatry, consider how the Western church might typically engage with the topic. Clearly, we’d view idolatry as sin. But in doing so, our first glance at idolatry passes through the lens of our traditional and widely-accepted definition for sin: “missing the mark.” That is to say, Westerners tend to define sin as falling short of God’s perfect righteousness and holiness—which, not coincidentally, also appeals to our Western guilt-innocence worldview.
To evaluate whether the claim of our idolatry is accurate or not, our next thought is to look for evidence of idolatry behaviors (e.g. “Where are we making idols?” “When are we worshiping demonic spirits?” “How are we not affirming Jesus’ authority as Lord?”). And using this paradigm, we don’t find evidence of idolatry and so dismiss the charge.
Hopefully, you’re beginning to see the susceptibility in our thinking. Our working definition (i.e. belief) of sin doesn’t allow us the opportunity to consider idolatry from the fuller biblical meaning of sin. We unknowingly overlook the historical Hebrew context that defines sin broadly, not just as “missing the mark,” but also as “missing the way” and “missing what is sought or expected.”2
The result: Our pragmatic and inherently Western concept of sin (while true) creates a blind spot—one where idolatry can flourish apart from our awareness.
To see our reality and our tendency toward idolatry, we must rethink how we see ourselves. Idolatry is primarily a matter of spiritual identity, not spiritual behavior.
Starting from the foundation of our created identity as reflectors of God’s image, now broaden your perspective to define sin more holistically. View sin as being separated from God. This perspective reminds us that our lack of righteousness and holiness are actually the outcome of sin, not the mechanism of sin.
This perspective also highlights the source of sin: humanity’s rebellion against God. And this rebellion was caused by the corruption of God’s identity in our minds, followed closely by (or simultaneously with?) the corruption of our own identity.
We chose to stop seeing ourselves as dependent image bearers, and chose instead to see ourselves as independent beings who function on their own.3
Idolatry Is Part of Our Inherited Nature
My primary point with all of this is that we are idolaters by nature. As physical descendants of Adam and Eve, we inherit their independent identity and separated condition. And so sin’s first inclination in us is toward idolatry—even if we’re covered by the blood of Christ.
The real issue with our sin condition (e.g. the “old self” of Eph. 4.22) isn’t that it is unholy and unrighteous, but rather that it’s fully inclined toward independent autonomy and self-reliance.4 So our natural understanding of God—who we intuitively believe him to be in our minds—is corrupted. Apart from faith and the Holy Spirit, our old self rejects him, desiring and trusting in other things (see Rom. 1.20-23, Eph. 2.2-3).
The beliefs supporting our old and corrupted identity are deeply ingrained in our brains, and simple declarations of faith in Christ aren’t sufficient to change them. And so it’s here that God’s Spirit must do his work of renewal, which in turn produces our transformation … assuming, of course, that we choose to participate in it.
We’ll discuss this renewal more in due time. But before we go there, we must come to terms with how our brains actually work—both for us and against us. That’s where we’ll go next.
In the meantime, I encourage you in the next week to meditate on our identity in Christ as simple reflections of our Creator, nothing more, nothing less. Contemplate on the wonder and immensity of God, and then (like Jesus) continue to see yourself as wholly and wonderfully dependent upon him.
Peace be with you …
This will make more sense in future articles, where I’ll unpack how our brain processes conscious and unconscious thoughts. I’ll explain how it is primarily our unconscious mental processing that drives our outward behavior (which sometimes doesn’t align with our conscious thinking).
For more of an academic deep dive on the multi-faceted meaning of “sin,” see Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume, Geoffrey Bromiley trans. (United Kingdom: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1985), 41.
I appreciate Larry Crabb’s emphasis on independence as the manifestation of sin. He does a masterful job of demonstrating the comprehensive way sin drives us to independence in our thinking in almost every area of life. See: Larry Crabb, Understanding People: Deep Longings for Relationship (United States: Zondervan, 1987).
Autonomy—which literally means “self-rule”—comes from Greek, the combination of autos (= self) and nomos (= law).