Idols of the Heart
John Calvin (1509-1564) was convinced that the human mind is a veritable “factory of idols.” In the following quotation from his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), Calvin alerts us to our fascination with and weakness for idols, and so, too, our need for vigilance. We must continually scrutinize our hearts and minds, checking against God’s Word what we find within. 
Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols. After the Flood there was a sort of rebirth of the world, but not many years passed by before men were fashioning gods according to their pleasure . . . Man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God.
To these evils a new wickedness joins itself, that man tries to express in his work the sort of God he has inwardly conceived. Therefore the mind begets an idol; the hand gives it birth. The example of the Israelites shows the origin of idolatry to be that men do not believe God is with them unless he shows himself physically present.
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How can we lovingly help one another to see our false idols, turn from them, and turn to God?
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