It would be interesting—perhaps even very helpful—IF we were told in the Bible that we could look for, and discover, distinct, so-called “idols of the heart,” but what Solomon, speaking to God, said is
You know the heart, for You alone know every human heart. (1 Kings 8:39 HCSB).
It would make counseling easier, I agree, but, then, there’s that clear statement that “God alone knows the heart.”
It’s time, therefore, for those who do so, to stop devising systems for doing what He “alone” can do. Besides, the Bible doesn’t speak of “idols of the heart” anyway. It does speak in Ezekiel—once—of the idols that the Israelites were carrying on/in (both prepositions are used) their hearts as they were being deported to Babylon to remove idolatry from their midst. They took them along in their minds since they could not carry the physical idols themselves. But there is nothing about producing idols in the heart. By the way that you continually hear about idols of the heart, you’d think that the Bible required counselors to look for them. It doesn’t. Yet, once again, we get new and better classifications of these. When an unbiblical idea gets going it is amazing how people ride with it, improvising, changing, and requiring new and better ways of dealing with counseling by means of it.
How sad it is to think that those who do so develop, and attempt to foist upon unsuspecting believers, “new and better” descriptions of idols of the heart, get a hearing rather than are questioned about the biblical basis for what they teach!
When are we going to begin to discover new and better understanding of what the Bible really says?
The problem is—it seems that there are those who want to introduce something “new” and “better,” as I said. Why they want to beats me, unless they want to get a hearing! To do so, they are unwilling to abide by what Scripture teaches. They must, instead, introduce something NEW. Otherwise they’d have little to write about!
If you wonder what has me all stirred up about this—take a look at some of the counseling sites out there at present. I’d like to know the Scriptural warrant for what they teach!