Keeping Christ at the Center: Resisting Idolatry in an Age of Distraction

There’s a tragedy unfolding in many corners of the church today. It isn’t loud enough to make headlines. It doesn’t announce itself with scandal or collapse. Instead, it moves like a subtle fog through sanctuaries and institutions, soft enough that few notice the drift. It begins whenever something good, something noble, helpful, even beautiful, slowly becomes ultimate. Whenever a community forgets that Christ is the axis on which all creation turns, and begins to revolve around something else.

“Idolatry rarely shouts; it drifts in to our hearts, asking only that we centre our lives on something almost, but not quite, Jesus Christ.”

Idolatry isn’t only the worship of false gods. It’s also the slow surrender of the heart to lesser lights. It’s the ease with which we centre our communities on the wrong thing, on ideology, personality, nostalgia, mysticism, doctrine, novelty, or tribal belonging, and only later realise that Christ has become a supporting character in a story meant to be shaped entirely by Christ’s presence and rule.

This problem is a shared vulnerability across the Christian household. Conservatives and progressives, liturgical communities and charismatic movements, traditional churches and experimental ones, every tradition has its temptations and its treasured idols. The forms differ, but the pattern is the same: when we take something good and treat it as the organising force of our life together, it begins to compete with the One who alone can hold the whole.

So this is a call, not to shame or scold, but to awaken. To remember what’s true. To clear the fog and see again the crucified and risen Christ, whose beauty and authority alone can hold the church in unity, humility, holiness, and hope.

The church doesn’t need more strategies or better optics. It needs to recover its centre. It needs to relearn the ancient posture of surrender, turning its face toward Christ until all the counterfeit lights fade to their proper size.

What follows is an invitation to examine the things churches often elevate to the status of idols, to reflect on why Christ’s lordship is essential, and to imagine the practices that help communities keep Christ as the blazing centre of their life together.

The Things We Turn Into Idols

If idolatry were obvious, we’d resist it. But it’s subtle because it often hides beneath good intentions or cherished commitments. Here are the things Christians commonly elevate until they threaten to replace Christ’s centrality.

“The danger isn’t that we worship obvious false gods, but that we elevate good things until they become ultimate things.”

1. Political or cultural ideology

Left or right, revolutionary or preservationist, any ideology can become a functional savior. When our politics define our theology instead of the other way around, we’ve enthroned a rival lord.

2. Tradition or innovation

Some communities cling to what’s ancient; others chase everything new. Christ can be lost in both nostalgia and novelty when either becomes the measure of truth or faithfulness.

3. Institutional reputation and survival

When protecting the institution becomes more important than truth, repentance, justice, or vulnerability, the institution becomes an idol dressed in religious language.

4. Doctrinal or moral superiority

Right belief and right living matter profoundly, but when they become badges of spiritual achievement, they choke out humility and grace.

5. Charismatic leaders and personalities

When communities organise themselves around gifts rather than Christ, they tether themselves to clay rather than to glory.

6. Nationalism, tribal loyalty, or cultural identity

Any identity marker that demands ultimate allegiance becomes a competitor with Christ’s kingdom.

7. Success, growth, and measurable impact

Numbers, influence, and achievement can masquerade as faithfulness even as they hollow out a community’s soul.

8. Comfort, stability, and control

Churches often cling to predictability and self-protection at the expense of discernment and obedience. Fear of loss becomes an idol.

9. Social justice or evangelism elevated as the whole gospel

Both are essential dimensions of Christian life, but when either becomes totalising, the gospel shrinks into ideology or activism unmoored from grace.

10. Scripture as an end rather than a witness

The Bible is sacred, but it points beyond itself. When the text replaces encounter with the living Christ, revelation becomes an idol.

11. Spiritual experiences and emotional highs

Mystical depth, charismatic wonder, and contemplative sweetness, each beautiful in its place, can become idols when they define what counts as “real” spirituality.

12. Purity codes or self-defined liberation

Whether rooted in conservative moral categories or progressive ethical visions, purity and liberation can eclipse the transforming holiness of Christ.

13. Community belonging elevated above truthfulness

A beloved community can become a soft idol when belonging means never challenging one another toward holiness and surrender.

14. Programs, methods, and ecclesial systems

Churches often rely more on the machinery of ministry than on the presence of Christ.

15. Suffering, activism, or service as identity

When identity rests in how much we sacrifice or accomplish, self-justification replaces grace.

These idols aren’t always consciously chosen. They’re usually inherited, absorbed, or assumed. They often arise from longing for clarity, safety, relevance, righteousness, or belonging. But when they become central, they distort the church’s imagination and mis-form its witness.

“When Jesus Christ ceases to be the centre, something else always rushes in to take that place, and it never carries life.”

Why Idolatry Is So Dangerous, And Why Christ’s Lordship Matters

Idolatry is a spiritual disfiguration. It changes not just what we believe but who we become. And it does so by replacing the living centre with something that can’t carry the weight of a community’s hopes, fears, and mission.

Idolatry deforms our imagination

Whatever sits at the centre of a church shapes how that church thinks, dreams, prays, and loves. If ideology sits at the centre, communities become combative. If stability controls the center, communities become rigid. If success defines the centre, communities become anxious and performative.

But when Christ is central, imagination is formed by the cross’s humility and the resurrection’s hope. The community becomes spacious, generous, courageous, and rooted.

Idolatry reshapes desire

Idols offer an illusion of control. They give a sense of clarity: “If we cling to this, all will be well.” But they demand constant feeding and attention. They generate anxiety. They ask us to protect them. They train us to fear the loss of what we’ve elevated.

Christ’s lordship does the opposite. Christ frees communities from fear. Christ invites them to trust, to surrender, to rest in a love that doesn’t need to be defended.

Idolatry fractures community

When something other than Christ is central, factions form around that thing. The church becomes a battlefield of camps, each guarding its version of righteousness or purity. Tribal belonging overrides unity. Fear overrides love.

But when Christ is central, walls fall. People learn to listen across differences. Commitment to humility, repentance, and reconciliation becomes part of the community’s DNA.

Idolatry compromises mission

A church centred on anything other than Christ becomes conformed to the patterns of its surrounding culture. It absorbs the anxieties, hostilities, and categories of its age. Its witness dims.

A Christ-centred community remains rooted in something deeper and older, something unshakeable, holy, alive. It resists the cultural tides not with contempt but with Christ-shaped compassion.

Ultimately, idols can’t save

They can’t heal wounds or break chains. They can’t forgive, restore, or renew. They offer the illusion of power but no transformation.

Only Christ can hold the human heart. Only Christ can reconcile enemies, restore communities, breathe hope into despair, and lead us into holiness. Only Christ is the true centre.

To say Christ is Lord is to proclaim the most profound truth of the universe: that all things find their meaning, coherence, and future in Christ alone.

The Psychology of Drift, How Good Things Become Gods

A community rarely becomes idolatrous through conscious rebellion. It happens through drift, a subtle, almost imperceptible turning of attention.

It happens when a community begins to fear loss more than it trusts Christ.

It happens when habits formed by culture slowly replace habits formed by prayer.

It happens when the urgency of the moment overwhelms the eternal call to faithfulness.

It happens when a church is shaped more by scarcity than by abundance, more by anxiety than by hope.

“Idols promise control, clarity, individuality, freedom, and belonging, but they always take more from us than they give.”

Idolatry is rarely about the idol itself. It’s about the need beneath the idol, the longing for stability, belonging, clarity, or control. Only Christ can address that need without distorting the soul. Every other source of security becomes a trap.

The church needs courage to confront this drift, not with condemnation but with gentle clarity. Communities must cultivate the humility to say: “Something noble has taken a place it was never meant to hold. We must return.”

“Communities don’t keep Christ central through slogans but through habits that re-shape desire and re-train the heart.”

And returning is always possible. Christ’s mercy makes restoration not only achievable but joyful.

Keeping Christ Central: The Practices That Shape a Faithful Community

Christ remains central not through slogans but through practices, habits of life that continually reorient the heart and refocus the imagination.

Here are some of the essential practices that help a community keep Christ enthroned at the center:

1. The practice of shared repentance

Christian community begins where pride ends. Repentance is revelation, a return to clarity. A Christ-centred church confesses its temptations, its idols, its distortions. It tells the truth. It refuses self-justification. It lets humility become its deepest breath.

2. The practice of contemplative stillness

Silence unmakes the idols we didn’t know we worshiped. It creates space where the Spirit dismantles illusions and awakens desire for Christ. A quieted heart becomes fertile soil for Christ’s voice.

3. The practice of Scripture as encounter

A Christ-centered church reads Scripture not as a weapon or rulebook but as a meeting place, a living Word that reveals the One who speaks through it. The Bible is no longer the centre, but the window to the centre.

4. The practice of worship that awakens wonder

Worship rooted in awe and humility pulls the church back into alignment with Christ’s glory. It reminds the community of the vastness of grace and the smallness of everything else.

5. The practice of community that crosses boundaries

A Christ-centred community intentionally resists tribal formation. It welcomes the stranger. It cultivates friendships across differences. It refuses the illusion that sameness is holiness.

6. The practice of sacrificial hospitality

Hospitality opens the door to the presence of Christ hidden in the vulnerable, the outsider, the forgotten. It forms the church into a people whose centre is compassion rather than self-protection.

7. The practice of sabbath and simplicity

Sabbath unmasks the idolatry of productivity. Simplicity unmasks the idolatry of accumulation. Together, they create space for Christ to reorder the heart.

8. The practice of communal discernment

Christ is central when communities pray, listen, reflect, and decide together, seeking not victory but truth, not efficiency but wisdom, not control but surrender.

9. The practice of peacemaking

Christ’s lordship is revealed through communities that refuse vengeance, nurture reconciliation, seek justice with tenderness, and love enemies with costly fidelity.

10. The practice of hope

Hope keeps Christ at the centre because it remembers that the future belongs not to our idols but to the One who has overcome death. Hope sets the heart free from fear.

“Silence, solitude, prayer, and Scripture unmask the idols we didn’t know we trusted and opens the soul to the glorious, holy, loving, presence we can no longer ignore.”

Signs a Church Is Re-Centering on Christ

Every church needs markers, compass points that reveal whether Christ is truly at the centre. These signs aren’t flashy or impressive; they’re quiet and costly.

A Christ-centered church:

• tells the truth about itself,

• leans toward repentance rather than defensiveness,

• embraces humility rather than triumphalism,

• cultivates a spirit of prayer rather than strategy alone,

• listens before speaking,

• extends mercy before judgment,

• forms disciples before consumers,

• welcomes difference without losing conviction,

• loves enemies rather than imitating culture’s rage,

• seeks justice without losing tenderness,

• adores Christ above every earthly loyalty.

“A Christ-centred church is marked not by triumph but by tenderness, not by certainty but by humility, not by performance but by presence, not by self-righteous judgementalism but by love.”

When these qualities begin to grow, even in small, fragile ways, the church is becoming itself again.

The Joy and Freedom of Christ-Centred Living

This entire conversation isn’t about moralising or burdening weary communities with more tasks. It’s about liberation. It’s about joy.

A Christ-centred church is free, free from fear, free from tribal captivity, free from anxiety about success or failure. It no longer needs to protect its idols or defend its illusions. It lives from the deep well of Christ’s mercy and truth.

A Christ-centred community becomes a sign of another world breaking into this one:

A world where enemies are reconciled.

A world where holiness and compassion dance together.

A world where honesty is normal and pretence is unnecessary.

A world where suffering is met with tenderness.

A world where the humble are lifted up, and the proud are invited into repentance.

A world where hope refuses to die.

“Christ dismantles our idols without dismantling us: this is the mercy that makes transformation possible.”

When Christ is at the centre, the church pours out beauty instead of fear, healing instead of defensiveness, generosity instead of scarcity, courage instead of compromise.

Christ alone is large enough to hold all our longing. Christ alone is gentle enough to heal our wounds. Christ alone is strong enough to break our idols without breaking us.

A Final Word

The church stands at a crossroads in this generation. The temptation toward idolatry is immense, not because the church has grown weak, but because the culture is loud. The idols of this age are persuasive. They promise clarity, security, belonging, identity, and power.

But there is another way.

A way that begins in humility.

A way that walks the path of the cross.

A way that burns with resurrection hope.

A way that refuses every rival centre.

A way that makes the love of Christ the gravitational force drawing all things together.

This is the way the church must walk, again and again, generation after generation. The way of surrender. The way of truth. The way of love.

And whenever the church returns to Christ as the center, the world sees not an institution fighting for relevance, but a people shining with the beauty of the One who called them from darkness into light.

May Christ be the centre.

May Christ be the beginning and the end.

“When Christ is the centre, the church becomes a living sign of the world God is bringing to birth.”

May Christ, in all Christ’s glory, humility, and love, draw us back from our idols and shape us into a people who look, act, live, and hope like Christ.

Bibliography

Nouwen, Henri J. M. The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming. New York: Image, 1992.

Nouwen, Henri J. M. The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society. New York: Image, 1979.

Rutledge, Fleming. The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015.

Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998.

Wright, N. T. Jesus and the Victory of God. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996.