#idol

When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshiping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger is actually the way the idol keeps you in its service, in its chains. Therefore if you find that, despite all the efforts to forgive, your anger and bitterness cannot subside, you may need to look deeper and ask, ‘What am I defending? What is so important that I cannot live without?’ It may be that, until some inordinate desire is identified and confronted, you will not be able to master your anger. ↗

— Timothy Keller

#bitterness #forgiveness #happiness #idolatry #security

What you need to drive out an old passion, is a new passion, a greater passion. What you need is an over-mastering positive passion. [...] Just as Rachel was Jacob's over-mastering passion, the passion of his life, Jesus is our "Rachel". To the degree, that you see Jesus on the cross, loosing absolutely everything for you, He will become a beauty to you, He will become so beautiful in your eyes that you'll be able to change these things that control you now, they'll loose their power. Do you know how to work on your heart like that? It's only by rejoicing in and resting in what Jesus Christ has done for you. Then you can replace your idols. And if you really want to change and want to pound the Gospel more deeply into your heart - Jesus Christ must become your over-mastering positive passion. ↗

— Timothy Keller

#idols #jesus-christ #passion #beauty

I inquired what wickedness is, and I didn't find a substance, but a perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance – You oh God – towards inferior things, rejecting its own inner life and swelling with external matter. ↗

— Augustine of Hippo

#sin #wickedness #life

Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life. ↗

— George Eliot

#love #work #life

Tom Hanks has been a huge idol of mine. I'd love to work with someone like him someday. You could learn a lot working with someone like that. ↗

— James Lafferty

#could #hanks #him #huge #i

There's a certain level of pageantry with 'Idol,' and in order to work the show, you kind of have to feed into it. ↗

— Adam Lambert

#certain level #feed #idol #into #kind

I've never seen American Idol but I am grateful to them. That show is one of Fox's biggest moneymakers, and some of that money goes to pay for shows like Prison Break. Simon Cowell's been signing my paychecks and for that I say thanks. ↗

— Wentworth Miller

#american #american idol #been #biggest #break

Literature and philosophy both allow past idols to be resurrected with a frequency which would be truly distressing to a sober scientist. ↗

— Morris Raphael Cohen

#both #distressing #frequency #idols #literature

In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar. ↗

— Trevor Nunn

#developed #english #english literature #i #idolatry

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty. ↗

— Ann Oakley

#families #idolatry #nothing #other #than