Actually, if you want to put it in those terms, then rejecting the devil’s illusion of right/left and seeing down/up is a bit eschatological. To say liberty comes from God, again, eschatological.

I wonder if you need to up your dichotomy ante. The better antithesis is eschatological, as in this age/next age. As it is, you seem to still have the fulcrum placed between different things in this age, such that you not only seem prone to spiritualize certain political expressions but aren’t quite sold on how the highest temporal good, which is to say life itself, is idolized.

And I’m not quite sure what to make of your skepticism that the human heart is the seat of all evil, except to say that I’ll read Owen if you read the larger balance of Reformed orthodoxy.

False idols (idol, by the way, has enough of a range of definition that it is practical to write false idols if for no other reason than for people who might associate one of its definitions with God Himself, however wrongly), again, false idols are *religion*. They involve worship and sacrifice and expiation and spirit (the spirit of disobedience, or the spirit of the devil) and connection and rights and ritual and so on. They involve belonging to a group. They are hard to see. They are subtle. When you learn of one that you are currently in the service of you will get angry and resentful and …did I say angry? Your religion will be being attacked.

Because the left idolizes the state. The right believes in limited government power and checks and balances. By left is obviously mean’t those who give their allegiance to the state and are willing to give up their freedom to the state and so on. Ronald Reagan once said there is no left and right in politics there is only down and up. Liberty is ‘up’, liberty comes from God.

This is a difficult subject for Christians because many Christians are confused politically. They have allegiances and resentments born of worldly influences and motivations.

The Soviet/Nazi lie was to make you think you only had two choices and that those two choices represented to sides of a political spectrum when in fact they were two brothers on the same side of the political spectrum, the down side.

>it’s the righties who idolize families and life,

A sharp observation. A difficult observation to make (I usually get rocks thrown at me when I suggest churches are more about family than the faith). I don’t know about life, but certainly family.

Locating the source of spiritual adultery in the heart is not really saying much, is it? Your heart isn’t a false idol. Neither is your ‘divinized self.’

When I say read John Owen’s Biblical Theology on this subject I am not just saying read any old good Christian on this subject, I am *specifically* saying read John Owen’s Biblical Theology on this subject. Owen wrote more deeply on this subject than anyone. It’s a difficult book to get through, but if you can keep the thread through all the detail and litanies you will see what I mean.

He gores many modern Reformed academic oxes though, so be prepared, but try to persevere.

Effective in unmasking my self justification. Effective in revealing to me my most damnable motivations in my most religious moments. If anything, the idol paradigm shuts the mouth of every human (both the religious and the irreligious) and magnifies God in Christ. In my own personal life, my communion with the Lord took a whole new turn when I realized that even my best deeds needed to be repented of. I don’t want to defend Keller for the sake of showing his idol paradigm as the “most” effective, because it is simply a method inferred from scripture. And you don’t need the idol category to know you are in rebellion but I would argue that the category of idolatry will make the most religious squirm in his/her seat.

And if there is only tyranny and liberty in statecraft, and if only liberty is from God, why does the NT only teach submission to rulers with no regard for whether they dole out tyranny or liberty (Romans 13:1-7)? There was good reason they were amazed in Mark 12.

If you read his 13 acts of soul worship, (from esteem to gratitude), you will find exactly what Keller articulates, which to me is what makes his idol paradigm so effective.

Interesting you bring up Owen, Keller has credited David Clarkson (1621-1686) who co-pastored with Owen, for having an influence on his understanding of idolatry.