What if Christ does not fill the empty cup we bring to him but rather smashes it to pieces, bringing freedom, not from our darkness and dissatisfaction, but freedom from our felt need to escape them? That is one of the questions Peter Rollins asks in his book The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction. When we imagine God as the being designed to satisfy our longings we are simply conjuring up an idol.
The author has some radical things to say to capture the reader’s attention and stimulate serious thought:
- Religious hymns become little more than advertising jingles, and the clergy come to resemble slick salespeople presenting their god-product to the potential consumer.
- Instead of God being that which fills the gap at the core of our being, the God testified to in Christianity exposes the gap for what it is, obliterates it, and invites us to participate in an utterly different form of life, one that brings us beyond slavery to the Idol.
- The Idol robs us of the type of pleasure that we could have if only we were able to free ourselves from the false promise that something would render us complete.
- The Good News of Christianity: You can’t be fulfilled; you can’t be made whole; you can’t find satisfaction.
The book provides a devastating critique of many of the practices of contemporary Western Christianity, arguing that the “God” we are trying to “sell” is an idol in our own making. Although I struggled with many of the author’s arguments and felt threatened by others, I was impressed by the degree of insight which they contained.
However, when it came time to suggest ways of addressing the “idolatry”, the author seems to step off the rational path into Alice’s Wonderland. He advocates contemplative practices including one called the Last Supper, which aims to draw people into an experience of learned ignorance; another is called the Evangelism Project, in which Christians visit people of alien beliefs in order to be evangelized by them. He advocates focusing on the writings of atheists during Lent, and he recommends an Omega Course, designed to draw people away from the “mythological form of Christianity” taught by the Alpha Course.
I recommend the book for its reflection-inspiring criticisms of many of our current church practices and beliefs, but I must confess to being too obtuse to understand the value and rationale behind the practices which the author advocates.