I just finished Thaddeus Williams’ new book, Don’t Follow Your Heart: Boldly Breaking the Ten Commandments of Self-Worship. He offers a creative and penetrating critique of the popular quest to find yourself and fashion your own identity by looking within.
Bible readers know the genuine Ten Commandments, as recorded in Exodus 20:1-17. And followers of Jesus recognize that he takes up and affirms (and even intensifies) God’s moral law: hate is a kind of killing, and lust is a kind of adultery (Matthew 5:21-30).
Williams takes a Screwtape twist: what are the foundational laws of the self-serving, sin-driven life? What commands are being kept by those who bow at the altar of self-worship? He names ten:
*Always act to glorify and enjoy yourself forever. *Never be outdated. *Obey your emotions at all costs. *Be courageous enough to defy other people’s expectations. *Live your truth and let others live theirs. *Pursue the rush of boundary-free experience. *Trust yourself and never let anyone oppress you with the notion of being a sinner. *“Thou shalt invent and advertise thine own identity.” *Force the universe to bend to your desires. *Celebrate all lifestyles and love-lives as equally valid.
As you ponder those “commandments,” it’s easy to see how they become intoxicating. All that elevation of ME, magnification of ME: makes us dizzy! We want to be Henley’s “Invictus”: “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
This allure swayed our first parents. The serpent assured them (in words flagrantly contradicting God’s warning): “You will not die” (Genesis 3:4). But the Tempter lied, and death took hold. And still now, the sirens of self-worship lie to us day in and day out.
Following your heart is dangerous: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9). Better than looking within is looking up, into the face of Jesus. Trust him!
