(upbeat music) This week on the Ask Pastor John podcast, we are joined by guest Dr. Richard Lentz, who serves as the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the main campus of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary just north of Boston. Dr. Lentz is also the author of a fascinating book that releases this winter titled, Identity and Idolatry, The Image of God and Its Inversion.

It's published in Don Carson series, New Studies in Biblical Theology. And it's, in my opinion, one of the better ones in the series. And Dr. Lentz, thank you for joining us. Of course, you know, biblically, we become like what we worship. We become like what we behold. That's a biblical paradigm in scripture.

We see in Psalm 115, verses four to eight, in Romans chapter one, verses 18 to 27. We see it in Romans chapter 12, verses one and two, and we see it in Colossians 3.10 and 2 Corinthians 3.18. It's really all over the place. We become like what we behold.

Negatively, of course, this is called idolatry. So to start out our week, can you summarize the Bible's explanation of idolatry and how idols shape us and change us to the very core of our identity? - Yeah, it's a great question to start with because our attention, especially of late, has been to think about the way in which that dynamic of our identity is formed negatively.

That is the way in which our desires are drawn to certain objects, which in turn shape us. That's the core dynamic of idolatry, but it's also the core dynamic of worship. It's the same experience, but flipped upside down. And of course, the scriptures start not with what's wrong, but with what we are created for.

So worship is also the experience of becoming like what we behold, like what we desire, in the positive sense of that word, created, if you will, to reflect God, to behold God. So idolatry is kind of turning that dynamic upside down, but it's still a pretty natural dynamic in all of us.

We still find our identity outside of ourselves. We don't find out who we are by looking inside. Idolatry is the honoring of things as ultimate, which are not ultimate, and which therefore reshape us after their own image. And the key question for us as we wrestle with our own idolatries are simply the questions about where does our hope lie?

What do we think gives us significance? What do we really at heart desire to become? And so though it's a incredibly personal matter that is of the human heart to wrestle with, it's also very much a communal question because it lies outside of ourselves. It is not simply an individual decision.

And therein lies the complexity of idolatry. Idolatry in any age, and we're gonna talk a lot about our modern idolatries in this conversation, but we need to be reminded that idolatry is not peculiar to our age, but it's present in every age. It just happens that we have different kinds of idols today than we had in earlier times.

- Yeah, so fill that out for us a little bit more. For good or for bad, we never find our identity by ourselves, in ourselves. Explain that. - Yeah, I think the way in which we have been created, and it really has to do with this fundamental biblical conviction that we are reflectors, we are images, we are mirrors, if you will.

And so that whole metaphor of the human being, that which reflects its environment, reflects its context, reflects its idols, reflects its God, is absolutely core from the beginning to the end of the canon. And so in the beginning, ordinarily, what we call worship, worshiping God faithfully, truly, is also a matter of our identity.

That's what we're created for. That's who we are. And so it's not a matter of discovering that critical dynamic of identity. It's a matter of coming to grips with it, realizing that our identity is part of that, I don't wanna call it an equation, but part of the dynamic between ourselves and the world outside of us.

And so lots of implications on that. It's no accident that we are not created as simply individuals, but we're always individuals in a relationship. Relationships remind us that identity lies outside of us in this community. And of course, the fundamental relationship is with God, but there are obviously lots of other relationships that take place.

And I think the mythology of the early part of the 20th century, and it still resonates to some extent in our time, is that the individual in isolation is who they really are. And we've recognized that that really is a myth that we find ourselves in community. That is, we find ourselves in the reflections of the context that we are in, rather than simply in the privacy of our own, you know, our own internal introspective thoughts.

As the adage goes, we are not who we think we are. We are not who other people think we are. We are often who we think other people think we are. There is that dynamic of recognizing ourselves when we recognize others. And of course, the core character in the plot, if you will, in this novel of ours, in this great story, is God.

God is personal, God is relational. God, we find ourselves in relationship, ultimately, to him, and that's the missing dynamic in our own contemporary experience of being defined by our context. We forget that the mega-context, the actual context of our lives, is God. - Yes, I wanna return to this point later.

In your book, "Identity and Idolatry," you develop an interesting connection in Romans chapter one, that idolatry is connected to our inclination to become control freaks. I wanna pick that up tomorrow. Thanks for joining us on the Ask Pastor John podcast with guest Richard Lentz. We'll see you tomorrow. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)