I remember thinking that
I remember thinking back being used to wrestle with the fact
When I was a Calvinist
Everything was 'bout an idol, we made an idol out of not making idols
Man that kind of cycle stifles you
If you emphasize it more than the Bible do
So sings Flame, Reformed rapper turned Lutheran, in one of his surpisingly many songs in which he rejects his earlier reformed theology for a decisively Lutheran one.1 It riffs off the famous Calvin line that the heart is a perpetual idol factory,2 but this notion is found in Luther too, in his comment that we never break the other nine commandments without also breaking the first. So, maybe talking about idolatry isn't so passe, Flame.
And yet, sometimes I think our treatments of idolatry are too glib or too shallow. Which is why I so enjoyed the way James K.A. Smith helps us unpack Augustine on the topics of ambition and sex. His chapter on ambition starts with the question, what do I want when I want to be noticed? And this way of framing the question seems incredibly insightful because it gets us almost 'behind' the idol to what we're truly seeking.
It's one thing to say, "don't be ambitious", but it's another to work out how and why we are driven by ambition. In Augustine's analysis, the desire for fame, for achievement, comes down mostly to the desire to dominate rivals, and the desire for attention. But, again, why do we desire these things?
Another aspect of Smith's take here is:
Our idolatries are less like conscious decisions to believe a falsehood and more like learned dispositions to hope in what will disappoint. Our idolatries are not intellectual; they are affective—instances of disordered love and devotion.3
This is why it's easy to have a conversation and say, "doing pretty well, I don't worship money, sex, fame" [the classic 3], but it's when we look at our actions, and see what they say about to what we are ordered or oriented towards, that we begin to grapple more with how idolatry continually works its way into our lives and out from our hearts.
Idolatry, on this account, isn’t just a problem because it’s “false” worship, on the register of truth, or merely a transgression of a commandment (though it is both of those). ... it is an exercise in futility, a penchant that ends in profound dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Idolatry, we might say, doesn’t “work”—which is why it creates restless hearts. In idolatry we are enjoying what we’re supposed to be using. We are treating as ultimate what is only penultimate; ... Augustine describes this by using the metaphor of a journey: disordered love is like falling in love with the boat rather than the destination.4
Because our desires are disordered, our idolatries are not born from nothing, so much as twisted versions of what is meant to be. In this light, we can see the desire for fame as the desire to be seen and loved. But no amount of likes is ever enough (I can tell you myself). I do think this is some of what drives social media (not all of it, I'm trying to avoid an overly simplistic take). Certainly I feel this pull, this allure. That people will view, like, comment on content. But you always want more, and the satisfaction never lasts, because deep down under the surface, we are made to be seen and loved by the Creator.
This isn't to say we aren't made to be seen and loved by other human beings! Indeed, if you've been around these parts for a while, then I think that's becoming a theme or motif. We ought to see others clearly and know them deeply, and love them as such. But no amount of human love of this shape ever satisfies our God-shaped desire.
Similar threads run through the discussion of sex - what do I want when I crave intimacy? Smith quotes Augustine Confessions 2.2.2, “The single desire that dominated my search for delight was simply to love and to be loved.” Isn't this just the same thing though? I don't think it's exactly the same. We might say that the desire for fame operates on a large scale, but the craving for intimacy functions on a micro scale.
what are we hoping for when we imagine happiness looks like having as much sex as possible? What story are we buying into when we believe a dominant narrative that tells us fulfilment looks like the multiplication of orgasms?5
A craving that desires both self-surrender and absolute consumption, "vulnerability and assertion", packaged up with intense physical pleasure. Promiscuity is an addiction to a drug that (like all the rest) feels good for a little while, and wreaks carnage on your for the long term.
The problem isn’t sex; it’s what I expect from sex. The problem with promiscuity isn’t (just) that it transgresses the law or that it chews up other people and spits them out as leftovers; it’s not simply the fact that it hollows me out and reduces me to my organs and glands all as a perverted way to feed a soul-hunger. The baseline problem with promiscuity is that it doesn’t work and is doomed to fail.6
Of course, plenty of things that Augustine says about sex aren't that great. Smith is honest about his disagreements. Augustine seems to think that sex itself is the problem, and so the solution must be celibacy. Smith, with most protestants, would say that disordered sex is the problem, and so re-ordered sex is the proper solution. Though, and I suspect Smith would agree, sex is not a necessity. A chaste single life is still a virtuous option.
What's true of fame and of sex, is generally true of our other would-be idols. Each of them betrays a desire, a good and right desire that has been disordered by our sin and our fallenness, and so dis-ordered to a different, lesser, satisfaction which can never satisfy. While I think there are other useful ways to diagnose, and treat, our idolatries, the beating heart of idolatry remains the same - substituting the created for the Creator.
The song is called “Used to Think”
hominis ingenium perpetuam, ut ita loquar, esse idolorum fabricam. Institutes I.11.8
James K.A. Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine, 82.
Smith, 82.
Smith, 95.
Smith, 99-100.