<transcy>Idols of the Heart and “Vanity Fair” (Les idoles du coeur et la foire aux vanités)</transcy>

The world is a 'vanity fair' made up of all kinds of seductions and dangers, as John Bunyan remarkably puts it. Something or someone other than Jesus Christ can take hold of our hearts and become the object of our trust, concern, loyalty, service, fear, and joy. When it does, the Bible teaches us that it is an idol.

The idols of our hearts are both generated from within and inspired from without. This is why the Bible approaches the problem of idolatry from two angles: the heart and the social environment. This essay explains the close link that exists between our personal idols and those of our social environment. It demonstrates how the motives of a disoriented heart as well as various socio-cultural systems can converge in sin, and it reminds us of how the gospel can deliver us both from personal sin and from the grip of false systems of sin. values ​​by which we are instinctively fooled.

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Author

DAVID POWLISON (1949-2019) was a teacher, advisor and executive director of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF). He received his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and was also the editor of the Journal of Biblical Counseling. He has written numerous books, including Towards a Renewed Helping Relationship , What is Sanctification? and The Grace of God in Suffering .